


The Supreme Constraint

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Series: The Travellers Toward the Sea [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Literary RPF, Toilers of the Sea - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Beach Holidays, Gothic, M/M, Multi, Post-Seine, Sad French Virgins, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-17 09:16:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8138744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: There are creatures which live in deep water between humans and harbours and the open sea. Jean Valjean has travelled a great distance from Toulon's shores, but the ocean is notoriously unwilling to surrender its prey.





	1. Prologue - Toulon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss M (missm)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missm/gifts).



> For Miss M, who wanted a story where _someone gets turned into a talking octopus and for Reasons the only way to undo the spell is to make your lover orgasm_. Your wish is my command — you wrote the hottest tentacle kink story, [Nothing But Flesh and Blood](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4377611), and I was so glad to play in the same sandbox. Plus a side helping of _waking-from-nightmare sex, holiday sex_ and _outdoor sex_ that hopefully hits the spot!

One man in peril, one chain deliberately weakened, one not-accidental slip, and he is falling from the ship _Orion_ under the autumn sky, into the sea. 

There is a dangerous current between the side of the _Orion_ and the frigate _Algeciras_ moored alongside her. To get beneath it, Valjean makes himself sink like a rock dropped into a cask of oil, plummets down and downward as if he was knocked senseless by the impact of the surface. 

When he is deep enough underwater that the sun has begun to dim above him, he begins to kick quickly and steadily away from the surface and the crews that would be despatched to rescue, or retrieve. 

He swims alongside the deeper currents, down past the dangerous keels of the frigate and the crippled military vessel hanging above him, away and out from the harbour and the sunken piles of the Arsenal point. He has experienced the sea of Toulon's harbour for nineteen years, and he is no ordinary swimmer — he is Jean Valjean: the man who has held a fallen pillar at the town hall upon his back, who lifted a fallen horse-cart off another with his bare hands, who saved a sailor hanging from the top-rope of the vessel. His breath is easy in his lungs as he swims toward the open sea and the child Fantine has given to his care.

The water around him is black and frigid, dark as the abyss he carries within him. Years under the lash have taught him hatred for the world and for himself; years in hiding have taught him to deny himself in an attempt to try to put right his past sins before God. And in the end he has still failed in making restitution — he failed to save Fantine, and he might still fail to save her daughter. 

If not for the child, there would be the temptation to stop striving, to surrender himself to the water, to let out his guarded breath and fill his lungs with the sea.

He swims away from darkness and toward darkness, and gradually he realises that he is not alone. 

Deep in the water, this feeling of another presence is so foreign that it takes long moments before it registers. The sensation starts from his breast bone and spreads in slow waves across his limbs and wet clothes, blossoming like a strange and deadly sea coral under his skin, inside his head. 

The water begins to churn around him as if in a storm. Soon he can barely move his limbs and his lungs have started to ache from the lack of air. He looks upward but cannot see anything apart from the swirling currents; he is surrounded by inky, unnatural blackness and that presence, vast and immense and waiting. 

Jean Valjean has been afraid for years, but today he is seized by a strange force and tastes his own mortality, and he is not afraid.

There is a voice in his mind, in the water, as vast as the sea and sky.

_Here, all is l’Océan, the open sea beyond humans and harbours. You have come freely into our domain, the abyss where all man's ignorant toil comes to an end and all mortal striving is over._

Valjean has heard the stories, of course: of creatures living in the ocean that will drag a man to his death on the sea floor, that would consume his flesh, that would violate that flesh with more than destruction. It seems that beyond the creatures is the pounding, merciless force of the ocean, of l’Océan. 

He feels himself seized, strange limbs winding like ropes around his wrists and ankles, a muscular slide about his throat and waist and shoulders that slowly but implacably pulls his legs apart. He flexes his own limbs, and the tendrils that hold him flex back.

_You are but a man, a small thing and unworthy. You belong to no one, as those who come from these shores belong to no one. Come to us; be ours._

Now he tastes fear, the breath escaping from his chest, the sinewy appendages curling around his body with encompassing strength. Valjean imagines a multitude of cephalopod eyes, red in the darkness, that can see straight into him. He begins to struggle against the brawny limbs that hold him fast.

The air leaks from him and he feels pliant flesh grasp his face and throat, a different sensation to the undulating muscles that slide around his arms and curl between his thighs. As he fights he feels a calcified hardness against his mouth, and a beak-like protrusion inserts itself past his lips and forces turgid breath down his throat.

Valjean snorts water out of his nostrils, gulps down the offered hot, damp air: accepts the ocean's monstrous kiss.

 _Be ours,_ l’Océan says: _Let us meet your desire._

The tentacles circle his hips and boldly traverse the deep cleft of his arse. One slides up the valley of his crotch, another strokes against his manhood, and Valjean feels the press of heated flesh through the thin wet cloth of his prison garb. 

Nothing and no one has ever sought to meet Valjean's desire over the course of his life, his own hand the only sexual touch he has ever known. Years in the bagne met him with blows instead of caresses; years in hiding have worn away a strong man's desire and replaced it with a penitent's self-denial. But now, under the strange dominion of the ocean, he feels arousal take possession of his body like a slow flood tide. 

In response, the tentacles around him grow swollen, their slide against his skin turns caressing, stroking his prick and his entrance over his clothes, and soon his mind and flesh are enveloped in a cloud of lust that is and is not his.

 _Let us meet your desire,_ is what l’Océan repeats into his head. And then, a dark unfurling that is not sound or thought: _Let us consume you as you desire, and then you can rest._

It takes a long moment for Valjean to realise the import of this pronouncement. 

And in that moment, he feels the temptation to surrender to the intimate grasp of the ocean's creature, to accept pleasure that he had never before been offered, and then oblivion — a final end to the long years of pain and toil and failure.

One moment only. Valjean knows he has not finished being broken on the wheel of punishment, knows how much more toil is required of him in this vale of earth before he can rest. Instead of l’Océan's red eyes, he sees Fantine's, full of supplication, sees Bishop Myriel's, full of love. L’Océan has said he, Valjean, belonged to no one, but though the Bishop and Fantine have both passed on he still belongs to them, is accountable to them; his soul belongs to God —

 _— The child_ , he realises, and then, pushing against the arousal, the seductive pull of oblivion, he thinks, fiercely: _The child, Cosette: I belong to her_.

The unexpected feeling he has for this girl he has yet to meet rises up against the confusion in his body and mind. He knows his failings, knows how deeply unworthy he is, and yet he knows he cannot fail her. 

He feels a sharp stab of l’Océan's surprise, the monster caught off-guard. He uses this split second of uncertainty to expel the air which the creature breathed into his lungs as powerfully as he can. At the same time he draws in his shoulders and chest and makes himself go completely limp beneath the swollen circles that hold him. 

One second, and it is enough — unused to rejection, the hard beak and mandibles pull back out of Valjean's mouth, the tentacles yield an inch or so of slack — and Jean Valjean's own mortal muscles fill that space, straining with all his strength against the coils of the creature. 

He knows he is flawed, knows himself manifestly inadequate. But not today, not with so much at stake. 

He strains against mighty l’Océan, and impossibly he — tears — himself free.

Sea-creatures thrash in the water, a cacophony of shrieking not-sound, tentacles and suckers flaying the skin from his hide as they are ripped from his body. Valjean is flung loose and kicks for the surface, lungs and shoulders burning as he churns through the depths, fear giving him impossible strength. 

He rears out of the water, gasping, to starlight, a pitch-black sky at night.

In the distance he sees the lights of Toulon, the small lamps of the vessels docked in the harbour. Hours have passed since he encountered l’Océan and their creatures, since those tentacles touched his body and soul and left their mark.

Valjean recalls legends of creatures that seduce or violate and destroy, that consume body and soul: selkies and sirens, leviathans and sea-serpents and sea-octopuses. Perhaps these are all l’Océan's, channelling the hungry, destructive, inexorable power of Nature, of the abyss. 

In his mind, there is a weighty silence, as vast as the black sea which still holds him. His shoulders burn as if from the lash of the bagne, and as he treads water Valjean realises the back of his smock is in tatters, the product of the monster's rage. His throat feels abraded from the creature's artificial breath, his limbs are awash with pain where the coils have grasped, his prick aches, and these hurts are nothing beside the gaping abyss within him. 

Silence, and then words form in the silence.

 _You are ours, marked by us as ours. Humanity has rejected you: you are fleeing its prison, like those others of your kind we have known. To whom will you belong if not to us? The child cannot love you as you crave; all men will reject you the moment they know what you are. One day the girl will also leave. And then you will wish to be destroyed — you will wish to be ours, forever._

Valjean shivers; he is now out in the open air but cannot catch his breath. L’Océan's words cut him to his heart, exposing the solitude that this life seems to have required from him. Did this loneliness leave him vulnerable to this monster, which consumes those unwise enough to flee Toulon's shores? A question he cannot answer, that he fears to answer. 

As he turns to swim toward the coast, he cannot stop shivering. From the cold of the water, the narrowness of his escape, the sensation that next time he might not be so fortunate.


	2. Paris to Guernsey

Valjean was still shivering when he woke to the dawn. 

For an instant he believed himself still in Toulon, crawling cold and exhausted onto the shore in the dawn light. But this dawn was more than ten years after Toulon, filtering through a window framed by the tall trees of the Rue Plumet garden, and it illuminated not just the room, but the man lying beside him, sharing his bed.

That man roused himself quickly, rubbing the sleep from his face with one large hand. Valjean could have sworn the former inspector had a sixth sense, a rhythm tuned to Valjean's own after so many years of pursuit.

"You are shaking," Javert frowned. He put his arm around Valjean. "Are you cold?"

"No. I dreamed of Toulon, for the first time in years." Valjean fell silent. He did not know how to describe the dream he had just had. He could not remember having dreamed of l’Océan before, nor about the creature's terrifying parting words.

Were those words the product of the nightmare, or did the ocean truly make him that promise of destruction, ten years ago? _…She will also leave. And then you will wish to be destroyed._

Javert placed his hand on Valjean's chest, above his heart. "Tell me," said his former hunter, this most unlikely of companions, whose unexpected esteem and devotion Valjean so manifestly did not deserve.

He ought not to burden Javert with his old fears. The encounter with l’Océan, such as it was, was deep in the past, buried together with Jean-le-Cric and Madeleine and the prisoner known as 9430 in the watery grave of Toulon's harbour. It had happened so long ago that it was almost as if he had dreamed it, as if it was merely a hallucination brought about by near-drowning and his narrow escape from death's grasp. 

Yet dreaming about it for the first time had made clear to Valjean that the encounter had been no dream. 

He shivered despite himself. What if l’Océan had been right? Cosette was a woman grown, and now a wife: she did not deserve the taint of an adoptive father with a beastly criminal past that he had still failed to confess. Perhaps she would be right to leave him as l’Océan had said she would.

Cosette had given him something to live for. Without her, would he once again be the man who belonged to no one, who desired his own destruction? Valjean could not stop shivering; his teeth chattered together as he tried to hold the vast ocean within at bay.

Javert looked upon him with obvious concern. Valjean felt a stab of shame over subjecting his friend to such worry.

"It is nothing," he said, with effort. "I have never told you about how I escaped from Toulon, have I?"

"The official report said you slipped from the lower yard and were feared tangled in the harbour piles, but I always assumed you jumped in deliberately, after you had weakened your ankle chain so it would easily break. Then you swam so deep and far that you eluded all reasonable efforts of rescue." Javert ran his thumb over Valjean's collarbone, a hesitant smile on his face. "After all, you were well known for escapes involving feats of endurance."

Valjean tried to smile back, but could not. "You are right, I did jump in deliberately. I did not get tangled in the piles, or at least I believed I did not. A sea-creature entangled me instead, or I thought it did — and it is that of which I dreamed."

"Small wonder, then, that you are still shaking." Javert rubbed comforting circles against his chest. "It must have been a traumatic experience to have imagined sea-creatures while near-drowning. I recall hallucinating myself before you pulled me from the Seine." 

Valjean opened his mouth to demur, but at that moment Javert's comforting touch became a caress, thumbing at his nipple slowly through the fabric of his nightshirt until it hardened to a pointed nub. Valjean made a small, involuntary sound of arousal as Javert leaned across to kiss him; when Javert tentatively placed his hand under Valjean's garment they both found that Valjean had grown hard in response.

After more than a year of sharing his bed, Valjean ought to have grown accustomed to his body's reaction to Javert's overtures. But he was once again caught by surprise when desire carried him away. 

It seemed by these timely attentions that Javert, the loyal companion that he was, wished to distract Valjean from dark dreams of Toulon and its monsters and his even darker past. Gratefully, Valjean relinquished himself to Javert's embraces, permitted Javert to open him slowly and thoroughly, and when they came together it was with the rhythm of neap tides upon a quiet shore.

Eventually, they subsided against the wrecked sheets, breathing unevenly from their exertions. Javert continued to hold him carefully. At times such as this Valjean wondered at the restraint Javert continued to demonstrate when they were in bed together, restraint that Valjean himself was never able to show as he unravelled helplessly under Javert's touch. 

Was it because Javert was afraid of further hurting the fugitive whom he had hunted for so long? Or was some small part of him still unwilling to trust the convict, the unworthy man who had refused to confess his past to those who most loved him? 

Valjean knew how fortunate he was to have Javert's companionship, this unlooked-for blessing so late in his life, from the one man who had witnessed all the evils Valjean had committed in his life and who esteemed him despite the same. He knew he had no right to request or expect any more from the former inspector, this lover who had been far more generous to him than he deserved.

"Better?" Javert asked. His tone was gruff, but he was smiling one of his rare smiles, and his grey-streaked hair had been put into an uncharacteristic disorder that was most disarming. 

Valjean reached out to smooth it back from the man's beloved face. "Yes," he said, and it was not untrue. "Thank you."

Javert touched Valjean's cheek in a rare gesture of tenderness. "It is late," he said. "I must wash before heading to the office. And you were going to visit with Cosette today?"

"I was," Valjean said. His fear of losing his daughter returned as he recalled l'Océan's words. 

Javert frowned. "You had mentioned a trip she is taking for the summer with Pontmercy. Is that still afoot?"

"Yes, in two weeks." It seemed a client of Marius' had asked the young couple to pass the summer in Guernsey, so Marius could help him look over a proposed business venture in St Peter Port, and so Marius' new bride could have a honeymoon on an island idyll in the English Channel.

Javert persisted, "She asked you to accompany her, did she not? After all, she will be on her own when Marius is carrying out his duties; she would be glad of your company."

"I decided not to go. It would be too much of a risk," Valjean said, slowly. Would he always be plagued by the past which he had not confessed to his daughter and son-in-law? "Besides, I will need to travel under Fauchelevent's papers." 

"You were prepared to do so when you were about to flee for England last year," Javert noted. "You know, you ought to tell Cosette the truth finally. She will not take the news badly. You should know your own daughter."

It was a long-standing disagreement between them. Valjean could not bring himself to do as Javert said, because he knew that such a confession meant that he must leave Paris, despite Javert’s protestations to the contrary. 

Still, he could not argue with this well-meaning friend, not on this morning after Javert had been so good to him. "You should wash," he said mildly, and Javert sighed again and got out of their bed.

 

*

 

They parted after breaking their fast: Javert to his employ as chief clerk at the legal chambers of M. Duvergier, advocate, and Valjean to Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire to call on Madame la Baronne.

As always, the stately lines of the Pontmercy house at No. 6 filled Valjean with a sense of disquiet. He did not belong here, could never have accepted Cosette’s and Marius’ entreaties to take up residence in this grand place with them. He stood awkwardly in the graciously-appointed drawing-room, staring at the window outlined on the polished floor at his feet by the sun.

Valjean’s heart lifted involuntarily when Cosette flew into the room like a bird on the wing; it weighed heavily within him again as he received her kiss. 

He had originally imagined that, once he had seen Cosette married and happy and cared for, he would make a clean breast of his past and then remove himself from Cosette’s life — he had told himself he might be able to live a lie on Cosette’s behalf, but not his own. 

However, events had conspired against him when Javert, convalescing at Rue de l'Homme Armé, had inadvertently revealed the events of the barricades to Cosette. When the young people discovered that Valjean had been Marius' benefactor the night of the insurgency, Marius’ gratitude was something Valjean had not known how to gainsay.

And so here Cosette was, a year married and cared for and oblivious, and in the meantime Valjean had grown too selfish to take himself from her side, as well as from the unlikely companionship of the former Inspector Javert.

Cosette frowned momentarily, as if she could read Valjean’s thoughts. Then her brow cleared and she clasped his hand. “Father, I have the best news. M. Gillenormand is coming to Guernsey with us! We have discovered that he is an old family friend of M. Ozanne, Marius’ client.”

“That will be nice,” Valjean said. He tried not to think about how infrequently she would write to him over the long summer months.

“That is not the best part. M. Gillenormand has said that you must come with us as well, he insists on it. The Ozannes have said there is more than enough room for us all at their family home at St Peter Port.” Cosette put her hands on her hips to forestall the refusal Valjean was about to offer her. “Father, you said no to me last week, but this time you are not to refuse my father-in-law, I will not hear of it. You need a holiday, and I would not be happy without you, what with Marius planning to work all day while on our vacation.”

Valjean, taken off guard, was not sure how to reject this appeal, couched as it was with reference to Cosette’s happiness. At last he ventured, “But that would mean leaving M. Javert on his own in Paris?”

Cosette took this remark entirely seriously. Over the past year she had grown quite attached to her father’s grim but well-meaning companion. “Why, M. Gillenormand has also insisted that M. Javert join us! It is true that M. Javert has retired from the police, but my father-in-law continues to have the highest regard for the abilities of the former inspector.” 

There was nothing Valjean could say to this, and Cosette seemed thrilled that their holiday plans had been settled to her liking. In the secret, selfish corner of his heart, he was gratified that his child still valued him, still wanted him in her life, at least for this summer. 

He ignored the whisper of the ocean within him: _One day she will leave… and you will wish to be ours, forever._

 

***

 

Six weeks away from work! The inspector would never have countenanced it. But Javert was no longer a policeman, and M. Duvergier had been happy to grant his chief clerk’s first request for leave. 

Of that time, it had taken six days to travel from Paris to Saint-Malo, the coastal town from which they would catch the ferry to Guernsey. Javert was heartily sick of the Pontmercy carriage and the slow pace preferred by M. Gillenormand.

Javert was still uncertain of his welcome amongst the Pontmercys. M. Gillenormand made him particularly uneasy. However, he would endure any hardship if it eased this journey for Valjean. The man was unused to this concept of a vacation — indeed he was too quick to deny himself. It was almost as though he felt he did not deserve the happiness of being with Cosette or indeed any happiness at all. For Javert, who owed everything he had to Jean Valjean, it was not easy to countenance.

Six days on the road, at an agonising pace. It was made more agonising by the accommodations at the various inns on the road to Saint-Maló. Propriety dictated that the three old men should have separate rooms, and Javert was no longer accustomed to spending the night alone. 

How Javert's defences had been so reduced! After rescuing Javert from the river, Valjean had put him in his own bed and stayed with him until his fever broke. But on the day Javert had healed sufficiently to rise and retrieve the shattered pieces of his life, he found himself returning that night to Valjean's side, and every night since. Valjean had opened his home at Rue Plumet to this wretched creature, with more compassion and generosity than Javert could ever deserve. 

Eventually, Javert's starved heart and body had finally responded to such unprecedented kindness — not as the implacable, irreproachable icon of the Law, but a broken sinner who had never known affection — and Valjean had once again welcomed him into his bed. 

Valjean, too, had over the course of his own long life never experienced another's desire. In Valjean's bed, they had learned it together. 

Javert’s childhood nights had been spent in crowded squalor; in Toulon he had slept in a dormitory with the other guards. For years afterwards, sleeping alone had been a blessed luxury. But after an unprecedented year of sharing caresses and then unguarded slumber in Valjean's arms, Javert found he was quite unable to get to sleep on his own. 

After two nights of increasingly feverish sleeplessness, Javert conceded his pride and made his way to Valjean's bedchamber. For the rest of the journey, he found himself deploying his skills as a former police spy toward the critical task of stealing into Valjean’s chamber at midnight and then stealing out again at dawn, all without disturbing the Pontmercys and M. Gillenormand in the next rooms. This indignity was compounded by the one morning when Javert encountered M. Gillenormand on his way back to his own room; fortunately, the old goat thought Javert was returning to bed after a clandestine night with the tavern help, and did not suspect the truth — that there was no lover more sentimental or inept than an old man in love for the first time.

This was made abundantly clear on the first night Valjean welcomed Javert to his room, where like much younger men they fell to the narrow bed in an urgent embrace. 

After they had caught their breath, Valjean began to laugh, quietly, so as not to wake their neighbours. “It seems we both had the same idea, though you were quicker about it than I.”

“I find I cannot sleep without you,” Javert said. There were many things in his heart and this was the one that was paramount.

“You need never do so again,” Valjean said, and drew him close once more.

 

*

 

On the seventh day the party reached Saint-Malo, and boarded the ferry for St Peter Port. The short journey was a fraught one, buffeted by the open seas. Cosette turned green and Marius rushed to the rail to expel his breakfast into the ocean. Valjean seemed caught in a strange mood, staring out into the horizon with a gaze that Javert could not read. 

As for Javert, he would never admit to a fear of anything in the world, but the ocean disquieted him too. He had never learned to swim, and since that night on the banks of the Seine he had no affinity for the water. 

They were met at the harbour on Havelet Bay by a florid gentleman of Valjean’s age who introduced himself as Charles Ozanne. He bid them welcome and wrung M. Gillenormand’s hand, speaking in excellent, almost un-accented French.

“Monsieur, I have not seen you since my visit to Paris, when Louis XVI was King. Thank you for introducing your grandson to my cousin Paul, Paul says he relies on Marius for all business decisions.” Ozanne turned to shake hands all round. “So glad you could join us for the summer! Paul will be here in a week. In the meantime, please be welcome at St. Peter Port.”

Ozanne was accompanied by two uniformed servants and a young man whom he introduced as his son William. The servants loaded all the trunks into a push-cart, and in this fashion their party was escorted to No. 38, Rue Hauteville, a short but steep walk uphill from the harbour.

No. 38 was a massive white-walled house of several storeys, overtopped with a structure which Javert knew was termed a belvedere. Ozanne took them around and showed them the billiards room on the ground floor. The hallway was tiled, and there was a vestibule which led to the large dining room with its walls of tiles framed in wood. A workshop led to the vast garden overlooking the bay.

The various bedrooms on the first floor of the house were allotted each to Gillenormand and Valjean and Charles Ozanne, with the last assigned to the absent Paul. The house's second floor featured a large master bedroom and a living room area, which Ozanne said was to be assigned to the newlyweds.

Above this was an attic which featured a panoramic lookout room and a small bedroom, designed in a style reminiscent of a ship's cabin, with a view of Havelet Bay.

Ozanne said, "M. Javert, I hope you do not mind being quartered here? You are the youngest unmarried man in the Gillenormand party, and are the most suited to so many flights of stairs!"

"This is fine," Javert said. He rather thought that Valjean would be doing much of the stair climbing. In this secluded attic room, out of earshot of the others, perhaps they could finally be more uninhibited. He looked cursorily at the single bed and supposed it would do. At any rate, they would find a way to make it do. 

A thought struck him. "M. Ozanne, I note that we seem to have displaced your family by taking up residence at No. 38 this summer."

"Oh no," Ozanne said. "My wife and my boy William and the other children are at Les Varendes in St Andrews, where we all ordinarily reside. This house, No. 38, was built by an English privateer at the turn of the century, and it's supposedly haunted."

Ozanne paused and took stock of Javert's disapproving look. "Of course I have no truck with such superstition myself. But Guernseyans are by and large a superstitious lot! Anyway, you have had a long trip. We eat early here, and dinner will be ready at eighteen hours."

Haunted, how ridiculous! Javert stopped himself from snorting in derision in front of his host. Javert’s small bag had been placed at the foot of the bed and he started to unpack. It did not take him very long.

When he was done he stepped out of the bedroom into the adjoining lookout. Ozanne had left but Valjean was still standing there, looking out of the windows at the harbour and beyond that, the sea. 

Valjean’s luggage had presumably been transported to his first floor room, but he was carrying with him a small valise which Javert had never seen before. His face wore a contemplative look which Javert had also never seen before.

There were three paintings that hung on the walls of the lookout room. One was a landscape, one an ink painting of a large sea-octopus, many-armed and menacing. A third was the picture of a rocky beach, with a light-house in the distance and a boat approaching the shore. For some reason it was even more menacing than the inky picture of the octopus. The waves were poised like knives, the shoreline hiding secrets, the boat a foreboding point in the distance.

Javert shook himself and approached Valjean, placing a hand on his shoulder. Valjean started violently, coming out of his reverie.

"What are you looking at?" Javert asked.

Valjean said, "The sunset on the ocean. I had never observed such beauty while serving in Toulon."

Javert was not sure the sight was that beautiful. Under the red Guernsey sun, the water looked like dark blood, ominous and fatalistic. He was unused to such aesthetic considerations, but what beauty he did see was in the cast of Valjean's solemn profile in the sunset.

Awkwardly, he said, "Will you come to visit me tonight? It may be more discreet than your assigned room."

Valjean looked at him with a small, familiar smile. "We will have to be careful, otherwise M. Gillenormand may also suspect me of clandestine activity with the help."

Javert snorted. "He will not suspect such a thing of you. Shall we go down for dinner?" He reached to assist Valjean with the valise, but Valjean jerked away from him again. 

His friend said, hesitantly, "Do you know, I find myself rather fatigued from our journey. Perhaps I will rest for a short while in my room."

"Of course," Javert said. He made himself speak casually. Certainly he was not so besotted or foolish that he could not endure a short time or even a night apart from his companion.

As he retired to the small bedroom after Valjean's departure, he took a final look at the paintings on the wall. In the low light of the evening, the picture of the ocean looked as if it had almost come alive, the waves moving and breaking on the rocky shore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) 38 RUE HAUTEVILLE:  
> In this chapter, the Valvert travel party stay at [38 RUE HAUTEVILLE](http://www.guernseytravel.com/things-to-do/hauteville-house) in St Peter Port, Guernsey, which once belonged to Victor Hugo during his exile from France (1851-1870).  Built around 1800 by an English privateer, No. 38 gained the reputation of being haunted by the spirit of a woman who had committed suicide, and remained unoccupied for several years.
> 
> Hugo bought the house from one William Ozanne on 16 May 1856 with the revenues from the initial success of the publication of Les Contemplations, where he lived for the last 15 years of [a long 19-year exile](http://www.tripmondo.com/guernsey/guernsey-general/st-peter-port/) (banished from France following the coup d’état by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte on 2 December 1851, and also expelled from Belgium in 1852 and from Jersey in 1855). Hugo transformed, furnished and decorated the house during his exile from 1856 to 1870, and during a return visit in the summer of 1878. All descriptions of the house in this chapter are from [this site](http://maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/en/museum-collections/house-visit-guernsey), including the look-out and small bedroom assigned in this chapter to Javert, which is where Hugo would have slept; it was designed in a style reminiscent of a ship's cabin and looked out over Havelet Bay.
> 
> It was during his time at Hauteville House that Hugo wrote _Les Misérables_. He also wrote _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ , which is dedicated to the people of Guernsey, from his room in Hauteville House, overlooking the harbour at St Peter Port. Here is a [photo of Hugo and his family](https://www.silversurfers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Victor-Hugo-Black-and-white-photo-1024x690.jpg) from that time ;)
> 
> The spooky pictures described in this chapter of [the Pieuvre](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dKl92rzBui8/Uu1XeVt-bnI/AAAAAAAAALw/FQ_Zl8kZKlk/s1600/hugo_octopus.jpg) and the Rocks were also painted by him during his exile. I confess I took some liberties with the latter (which is an amalgamation of [these](http://content.ngv.vic.gov.au/col-images/api/EPUB000226/1280) [two](http://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/kunst/victor_hugo/casquets_lighthouse_hi.jpg) paintings), but the [terrifying sea-octopus picture](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dKl92rzBui8/Uu1XeVt-bnI/AAAAAAAAALw/FQ_Zl8kZKlk/s1600/hugo_octopus.jpg) is All Hugo. 
> 
> (2) THE OZANNES:  
> The Ozannes featured in this chapter were real historical Guernsey characters. [WILLIAM OZANNE](http://didier.radenac.pagesperso-orange.fr/livres/goudge_documents/genealogie/descendance_ozanne.htm) [(1816-1889, m. Rosalie Torode in 1839 )] was the son of CHARLES (1778 – 1857) and Marie (born Le Pelley in March 1793, in Catel, Guernsey). 
> 
> William would have been seventeen in 1833, so it's Charles who is M. Gillenormand's old friend in this chapter. Of course, William grows up to sell the house to Hugo in 1856. According to the 1851 UK Census, the Ozannes lived at Les Varendes, St Andrews, Guernsey.  
> 
> (3) LAWYERS:  
> In Miss M’s post-Seine world Javert finds work as a lawyer’s clerk, and I thought it would be cool for Javert to work for [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Duvergier). See also [this academic article](http://www.theses.fr/2003BOR40014). 


	3. No. 38, Rue Hauteville

In the years after he had rescued Cosette from Montfermeil, Valjean had kept with him a small valise. It contained the possession he most valued: a sentimental memento of his daughter when she was a girl; more important even than the silver candlesticks which had been given to him by the man who had changed his life. 

He knew he guarded this valise jealously. It had been locked away in a secret compartment in the Rue Plumet bedroom, hidden as all memories of his past, but now that Valjean was travelling abroad under the papers of Ultime Fauchelevent, he felt bereft without it. 

He had not spoken to Javert of the contents of the valise. He had for the most part kept it with him in case his secret was uncovered and he needed to flee. Now that was no longer a concern, Valjean knew he ought to be able to mention it freely to his companion. But he did not wish to engage in yet another argument with Javert about revealing his past to Cosette.

This made him less-than-communicative over dinner, as well as later in Javert's attic bed, where he instead sought to let his lips and body stand in for conversation.

Indeed, Javert was suitably distracted, to the extent of almost forgetting himself, and crying out repeatedly in pleasure — Valjean gave silent thanks that they were not engaged in this particular activity on the first floor, in the room between Ozanne and Gillenormand, and beneath Marius’ and Cosette’s bridal chamber. 

When Valjean had occasion to steal out of Javert’s room at daybreak, his friend was fast asleep, exhausted from their exertions.

Later that day, they made ready to attend church in St Peter Port. Gillenormand insisted on turning himself out in his Sunday best and promenading on Marius' and Cosette's arm into the Notre-Dame du Rosaire along Burnt Lane. The fashionable visitors from Paris, in the company of M. and Mme. Ozanne and the entire Ozanne family, seemed out of place amongst the modest grey brick and stone facade of the modern church and its even more modest parishioners. 

For the first time in his long guardianship of his daughter, Valjean felt aware of the contrast between his own threadbare Sunday suit and Cosette's elaborate summer skirts. He watched as Marius, resplendent in fine light-weight jacket and waistcoat and trousers, handed her into the Ozannes’ centre pew in the pride of place in the church's nave. 

Valjean seated himself quietly at the end of the wooden pew at Javert's side. He had hidden the valise in his room, under a pile of laundry in the Chinese chest at the foot of his bed, but he felt its absence like an invisible brand on his skin. 

Service at Notre-Dame du Rosaire was carried out by its young priest, a Fr. Ebenezer Clubin. He conducted the liturgy in reasonable Latin, and the homily in the local dialect, Guernésiais. Fr. Clubin preached from St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews, asserting _Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight; everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him_ , and it was brought home to Valjean that no secret could be kept for long without being called into account.

After the service, Ozanne briefly introduced his guests from Paris to Fr. Clubin. The priest greeted them graciously enough in passable French, but he had a distracted air about him, green eyes fixed on some faraway point in the distance. 

They took luncheon with the Ozannes at their family home in St Andrews. It was a charming village with a sleepy countryside quality and seemed quintessentially Guernseyan. 

"What are your afternoon plans?" Ozanne asked Gillenormand. "I am afraid there are not many shops as you must be used to in Paris, and today they are not open, but there are pleasant garden walks here in town, as relaxing as those at No. 38, and we are of course known for our beaches."

"Is there mixed bathing here in Guernsey? It is all the rage in Paris," Gillenormand said.

Ozanne laughed. "Here in Guernsey we are unused to our ladies watching our men swim, as we do so without the Parisian _caleçons_ , and Madame Cosette might get an eyeful of local manflesh."

Cosette smiled patiently, and young William, a strapping lad of seventeen or thereabouts, turned red. Marius asked, "If we were to seek out a nice beach for families, where would you suggest we try, Monsieur?"

Ozanne said, "Madame might enjoy a visit to La Valette, which is close to the Havelet Bay. As for beaches, Fermain Bay, which is just south of here, is very popular."

Beside him Javert made a soft, scoffing sound. Valjean hid his own smile; he already knew what it was that they would not be doing in the afternoon.

 

*

 

Valjean accompanied Marius and Cosette and the Ozanne men in the Ozanne carriage to Fermain Bay and its Sunday throngs: families with small children walking along the beach, older folk keeping their distance in the shade. It was very hot. From the shore he could see the outline of other islands in the distance. 

He remained there long enough to converse politely with William in a mixture of French and Guernésiais regarding the fishing industry on the island, and for Marius to purchase a cool drink for Cosette to ward off the heat. Then he made his excuses to his daughter and told her not to wait for them for dinner at No. 38 that evening.

Javert emerged from under the shade of one of the beach parasols, settled his hat on his head, and attached himself at Valjean's elbow like his shadow.

In companionable silence the two men left Fermain Bay and followed the winding path across the steep cliffs overtopping the sea. 

Under the afternoon sun, the elevated, rocky terrain of Guernsey's eastern coast looked wild and unfamiliar, the igneous outcroppings of characteristic granite so different from the weathered lines of the Normandy coast or the breakers at Toulon. As they strolled along on the edge of the high cliffs, Valjean gazed out at the blue-grey ocean, vast and boundless and almost the same colour as the cloudy sky: it was difficult to tell where the sea ended and the sky began.

Further up the path was the stone bulk of Fort George, the newly constructed British garrison. The forts and walls looked as if they were built with Guernsey granite, the embrasures lined with brick. The garrison was silent, the Union flag nowhere in sight: either the troops had yet to take residence or had been given the weekend off.

Javert had walked slightly ahead of Valjean and now peered over the edge. "I believe there is a path down to the beach," he said. "Shall we make the attempt?"

"Certainly," Valjean said. The men picked their way down the steep path of weathered rocks, finding the going easier than they expected. 

After twenty or so minutes of climbing, they discovered themselves on an expanse of rocky beach, stretching as far as the eye could see, and utterly deserted. All was silent, save for the occasional cry of gulls, and the murmur of the waves on the shore.

In the privacy of the secluded beach, Javert made bold enough to press Valjean's hand. "This is much more satisfactory," he said with one of his rare, unguarded smiles. 

Valjean felt an answering smile reach his own lips to see his friend unshoulder his defences and to finally relax in Valjean's company, away from prying eyes. In the same way and by mutual agreement, both of them divested themselves of their hats and jackets and then waistcoats, until they were in their shirtsleeves on the beach.

On the surface the ocean looked peaceful, like a mirror reflecting the blue sky. 

"How pleasant this is," Valjean said; it was strange to feel so unexpectedly content, standing on this foreign shore in the Guernsey sun with his friend's hand in his. "Do you wish to take a swim?"

Javert said, "I know you do. There would be no eyes to see you, here, if you wished to swim bare like the locals would," and he tugged Valjean close for a brief, hard kiss. "Alas, I cannot swim, but the prospect of watching you take to the water unclothed is a pleasant one."

"I could teach you," Valjean offered. 

"Perhaps when the afternoon is less hot," Javert said. "Let us walk over to the outcroppings beneath the cliffs. There seems to be more shade there."

They left their clothes in a pile on the pebbles above the high water mark on the beach, and followed the line of the cliffs away from the shadow of Fort George. They pressed on for some time, climbing over boulders and jagged piles of rock that reared out from the cliff face, before they reached an impassable projection that jutted far into the sea.

"We should turn back," Valjean started to say, when Javert darted over a sloping ledge, and vanished.

Valjean stood taken aback for a second, then he followed Javert over the ledge. He would have missed it if he had not been looking for it: a narrow passage concealed between two massive boulders, barely wide enough for a thin, wiry man to pass through.

Valjean was glad he had divested himself of his jacket, because he was less slender than Javert and the passage would have been a much tighter fit. He finally managed to struggle through, expecting to encounter a shallow recess and Javert hiding smilingly within, and started when he found himself in a large cave deep within the cliff face itself.

The cavern was lit from above by an opening in the roof, through which Valjean could see a sliver of blue sky and the sun. The cave floor was pebbles and moist sand; at higher tide Valjean imagined that the chamber would be at least half-filled with seawater. 

Javert emerged from an opening on the far side of the cavern. His thick hair had started to escape from its strict bindings, and his eyes were bright in the low light. "Come and look at this," he said, and held out his hand. 

Valjean warily clasped hold and let Javert lead as they climbed into the space beyond the cavern.

He soon found himself in a narrow passageway with exits on either side, branching into low alcoves of the central space which indicated the position of small lateral caves beyond, perhaps accessible at lower tides but now filled with shallows.

He followed Javert down the passageway, peering into the openings. There were sandy gaps and spaces a few feet wide, washed bare by the action of the water and stretching inward into dark recesses where the eye could not follow.

Valjean could not stop staring into the archways half-filled with brackish sea water, hinting at lower caves completely submerged with water even at low tide. What plants and treasures might lie hidden that were not found in continental France? 

He would have pressed on, eager to see where the mysterious system of caves led them, each recess opening into the next like cunningly nested boxes, but he noted that the water level had already risen to their ankles.

"We should return," Javert agreed, and Valjean permitted him to retrace their steps and lead the way out of the caves, once again squeezing out with some difficulty.

The sun was low in the sky when the men emerged. Against the expanse of the horizon a flock of sea birds formed a white line against the sky. They were flying fast, as if pursuing their prey or themselves pursued.

The tide had started to come in, tracing grand patterns on the shore. The rhythm of the waves was at once peaceful and mesmerising.

Valjean felt Javert's hand on his cheek. With an effort, he pulled his gaze from the skyline and focused on his friend.

"Are you ready for your swimming lesson?" Valjean murmured.

Javert said, "Maybe another day. I know you wish to swim, and I do not mind watching from the shore."

Valjean laughed. "Take your boots off at least."

Javert complied. He even managed to procure an ancient blanket which a fisherman or perhaps a soldier had left on the rocks. Valjean took off his own boots and trousers; he left his shirt on in a concession to modesty and to the marks which Toulon's lash had left upon his back. 

With Javert at his side, he wandered out into the waves. His feet were so calloused from years of walking that they barely felt the sharpness of the pebbles on the sea bed, but his skin remembered the salt sting of the ocean. The waves lapped his calves, then, as he waded deeper, his knees and thighs. Javert hung back and Valjean moved on into still deeper waters, the sea wetting his shirt and drawers. He felt the sea shelf slope down away from his feet, and he gave his weight to the ocean and let it lift him up.

Valjean took slow strokes toward the horizon, the water warm and welcoming. The salt ocean made him buoyant, the tides tugging him gently parallel to the shoreline. He turned for a brief moment to look back at Javert where his friend was standing in the shallower waters; he waved, and Javert waved back.

Valjean turned back to the horizon and ducked his head under the water. 

The sea of this secluded beach was surprisingly clear. In the sunlight from the surface Valjean could see the rocky sea bed, the flashes of underwater vegetation, the signs of marine life.The waves carded through Valjean's hair, lifted his shirt so it billowed whitely around his body like an anemone.

He kicked downward, closer to the sea bed to where the water was cooler. The shoots of the aquatic plants waved in the current, mosses crawled over the protuberances of stone, tiny limpet-shells and crustacea nestled against the pebbles and troughs of the sea floor. 

As he swam, his eye was drawn to a massive plant attaching itself between jutting rocks. It spread its swaying fronds like a thick fringe of seaweed, fibrous and undulating, almost black, with small innumerable flowers of sapphire blue. 

The flowers were the blue of Cosette’s eyes, guileless and trusting — and blind.

In that moment of familiar guilt, Valjean felt the dark, mossy shoots of the plant brush against him, and a strange presence shift in his brain, inside his skin. It was as if the plant’s fronds reached out its clammy tendrils to twine around his arms and legs, to entangle him in a cold embrace and hold him fast to the sea bed.

Valjean exhaled in a second of panic, bubbles of air breaking from his throat, as the weeds seized him and the massive thing caught him in a many-eyed snare as cold as his daughter’s dismayed regard.

He flailed his arms, and there was a familiar not-voice inside his head.

_You have returned to the abyss, freely and of your own will. Are you now ready to make an ending?_

The tendrils snaked across his chest, under his shirt, slithered around his naked thighs …

 _“…No,”_ Valjean gasped, took in water, and kicked in a frenzy for the surface, frantic to slough off the tendrils and to get free. The fronds stretched and tore — there was a shrill noise in his mind —

— and Valjean broke through the surface of the sea, gasping for air. 

For an instant, he felt a dizzying disorientation — he could not distinguish between sea and sky, between horizon and shore. The caress of the ocean was still upon him, was all around him, filling his skin with agitation.

Then he heard Javert calling to him. The edge in Javert's voice, hoarse and urgent, pulled Valjean back to himself. He turned around, saw the glint of the shore, and began to swim toward it, with Javert's voice as a guide.

 

***

 

Javert saw Valjean vanish underwater. He was not at first unduly concerned. He above all people knew how strong a swimmer Valjean was. But when minutes ticked by, Javert started to scan the water, and then to start calling Valjean's name, his real name. He cursed himself for a coward who had been too afraid of the water to learn to swim, and who was now helpless to assist his friend.

Finally, blessedly, he saw a white head break the surface. Heedless of his own safety, he started forward into the ocean toward Valjean, and was only halted when he was wet up to his chest and the waves threatened to knock him off his feet.

Valjean came upon him quickly, and together they struggled back to shore. Javert was trembling almost as much as Valjean was, his trousers as sodden as Valjean's shirt.

"Are you all right?"

"I think so," Valjean murmured. "I thought I felt something in the water, the same thing I felt in Toulon so many years ago."

Javert felt stricken. His friend was still so burdened by his past that his imagined monsters had followed him to this island. "You should get dry," he said, and held the ancient blanket out to Valjean. 

Valjean took his shirt and drawers off and wrapped himself in the blanket. Javert himself stripped off his own wet trousers and spread the clothes out to dry in the last of the afternoon sun. Then he put his arms around his friend and they sat on the beach and held each other wordlessly.

 

*

 

They remained on the beach for an hour or more, long enough for the sun to begin to set. "It is getting late," Javert murmured; Cosette would be concerned if they did not return by nightfall, and he was not sure how traversable the cliff path would be in the darkness. 

Valjean nodded, and started to pull his drawers on when they noticed a figure climbing down the cliff path. They saw a flash of fair hair, and as the figure neared they recognised the gangling Fr. Clubin from Notre-Dame du Rosaire.

"Father," Valjean said in greeting as the young priest approached them.

Fr. Clubin's green eyes narrowed before he recognised them, and his narrow face broke into a crooked smile. "Ah, Ozanne's visitors from Paris! What a surprise to see you here. Not many tourists make their way to this beach, and it's not popular with the locals, either."

"We were at Fermain Bay earlier, but there was too much of a crowd," Valjean said. "And our steps took us here, where it was much quieter."

"Aye, that it is. I come here myself because it is quiet." The priest gathered his robes and seated himself on the beach beside them. Together, they looked out into the horizon, where the setting sun cast its red rays across the water.

"What is this beach called?" Valjean asked. Doubtless he wished to give an account of his afternoon later to Cosette.

Fr. Clubin said, "This beach was only named recently: Soldier's Bay, for the soldiers. Before the garrison was built it had no official name, though the locals referred to it as 'Pieuvre Bay' for the legendary monster that is said to reside here."

Javert did not know the term. "What is this pieuvre?"

"It is the word for a species of sea-octopus in Guernésiais." Fr. Clubin's voice took on the academic sound of a recitation of Latin Mass. "This animal is the same as those which mariners call Poulps and which ancient legends call Krakens. The English sailors call them Devil-fish. But here on the Channel Islands they are called pieuvres."

His hands reached outwards to describe the massive span of the thing.

"There are academic writings which depict a Poulp of high latitudes being strong enough to crush a frigate. In Sark, a pieuvre was captured while pursuing a bather in shallow waters. It was found to be four English feet broad, and it was possible to count its four hundred suckers. The monster thrust them all out in the agony of death."

Javert frowned. This seemed unlikely, but Fr. Clubin seemed to be describing actual phenomena. "And the pieuvre who allegedly lives here, on this beach?"

The young priest said, solemnly, "If the local legends and stories of the people can be credited, the popular superstition is that it is an unholy creature created not by God but by the Devil himself, a being which attacks ships and sailors in the deep sea between Guernsey and Jersey and the continent, and violates and then destroys them, leaving only their personal effects behind.

Javert recalled the picture of the ink-black sea-octopus hanging outside his attic room at No. 38 — a malignant, brooding morass of evil intent, larger than any mere earthly creature.

"It was said that this monstrous Pieuvre was responsible for the disappearance of the fishing vessel, the _Jean Auberge_ , five years ago,” Fr. Clubin continued. “She was sighted in deep fog running aground on the Hanways reef a mile from this shore. But when rescue boats were sent to the Hanways, she was not there, and she was never discovered, save for her mast, and the clothes of her three crewmen found on the reef itself.”

Fr. Clubin paused, and in a terrible, nonchalant manner, said, “And my own cousin Denis, the captain of the _Durande_ , went missing two years ago. His ship foundered on the perilous twin Douvres in the deep sea halfway between France and Guernsey; his men took the longboat to seek help while he remained. When help came, Denis was not to be found on board the wreck. Instead, all that was left on the side of the ship was his garments and small clothes. He was an experienced captain and would not have abandoned his vessel voluntarily, let alone in such a state of undress. Later, his boots and his rosary washed up on this very shore.”

The young priest fixed Javert and Valjean with a particularly piercing gaze. His meaning as to what purpose the captain had been seized for was clear. The redness of the setting sun echoed in his face. 

“The Pieuvre is said to lurk here, in the caverns of the impenetrable cliffs that face the open sea. It is said to be drawn to the greedy, the wicked, the weak: on those who would seek the destruction of others or themselves. To this day, some people have even gone so far as to leave on this beach live offerings — male rats without feet, he-bats without wings, toads trapped between the pages of a Bible. Their hope is that the Pieuvre will consume this mutilated prey, prey that will easily surrender their little lives, and leave the men of Guernsey at liberty."

Javert looked sideways at Valjean’s face, which seemed entirely drained of blood. With a pang, Javert recalled Valjean’s frightening experience in the ocean, and interjected belatedly to discredit the young priest’s tale. “Father, as a man of God surely you do not believe these stories, or consider your own cousin would have fallen prey to such an alleged supernatural occurrence.”

Fr. Clubin’s eyes were the colour of the ocean: green, full of the unknown.

“M. Javert, who knows? There have been stranger things under Heaven. The multiplication of monsters on this earth has long been suspected by philosophers in their contemplations. A creature which consumes men’s bodies and souls has been presented to the eyes of human beings by St. John, and by Dante in his vision of Hell… If the invisible circles of creation continue indefinitely, if after one there is yet another; why then the Devil-fish at one extremity proves Satan at the other.” 

The priest shook his head slowly. “And poor Denis was a strong captain but a weak man, as men without God are weak. These sea routes are notorious for smugglers and brigands, and those who ply the sea have many opportunities to indulge in greed and lust and other sins. Perhaps in this way Denis fell prey to that perverted devourer of souls of the deep ocean, which cannot be vanquished.”

“I do not believe that,” Valjean said, slowly, and Javert turned to look at him. “God has made Nature, which may seek to destroy man in all his pride. But Nature itself is not evil. It may be inexorable, hungry, it may consume, but it does not seek to condemn eternally. Instead, man performs his own condemnation, with his ignorance and greed and hatred. As for your cousin, Father, the oceans consume good men as well as evil ones. It is only God Himself who has the power on heaven and earth to judge what is in a man’s soul, in the same way as God has provided for man’s salvation, by faith and through love.” 

Fr. Clubin did not speak for a long moment. The sun sank below the horizon, and Javert could see the early stars.

Then the young priest said, slowly, “Your faith does you credit, M. Fauchelevent. But would it not be to God’s purpose that evil would consume itself — in the same way that a man’s wickedness, his weakness, delivers him into the hands of the Devil? And once he condemns himself, once he surrenders, then all hope of God's salvation is lost.”

He got to his feet. The wind rose and fluttered through his robe like a flag. Javert watched him walk along the water’s edge. Then he disappeared behind one of the boulders, so completely that it was almost as if he had not been there.

“That was exceedingly strange,” Javert said, more to himself than to Valjean. Then he grimaced. “We should leave.” Their wet clothes had not completely dried, but it could not be helped. Fortunately there was ample starlight to illuminate their path back to No. 38.

Valjean shrugged off the blanket. Under the stars, the scars on his broad, muscular back were silver with age. As always, the scars drew Javert’s gaze, filling him with regret.

Then Javert started. He had never before noticed that one of the scars had the shape of several circles close together, as if made by the suckers of a large sea-octopus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) NOTRE-DAME DU ROSAIRE was the [first Catholic church in St Peter Port](https://catholic.org.gg/churches/notre-dame-du-rosaire/history/): established at Burnt Lane, it opened its doors in September 1829 and temporarily closed from 1851-1860. 
> 
> (2) SOLDIER'S BAY, ST PETER PORT:  
> As per Esteven, this rocky beach in the shadow of Fort George was surrounded by wonderful cliff path walks and scenery, and was an easy walk from St. Peter Port along the steep cliff path. **It seems Victor Hugo used to swim here, possibly in the nude**. [ (This is clearly the most thrilling link out of all the links on this story.)](http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/guernsey/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8530000/8530355.stm)
> 
> Valvert take [this route](http://www.guernseywalker.me.uk/StP%20to%20Fermain.html) from Fermain Bay to Soldiers’ Bay.
> 
> (3) ON MIXED BATHING:  
> It would seem that mixed bathing in the early 19th century wasn’t a common practice; in the early years in England men swam naked, and it was not until the mid-1860s that local authorities and swimming clubs introduced [regulations to ensure that male swimmers wore bathing costumes when swimming in public](http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BrightonSwimmingClub.htm), particularly when in the presence of women and children. 
> 
> In France it was different -- mixed bathing was commonly practised in France, where it was customary for men to wear brief bathing trunks called _caleçons_ when in the presence of women. See, e.g., this 1815 etching illustrating men and women swimming together from a boat: [Les Nageurs (the Swimmers)](http://www.clarkart.edu/Collection/4751). Of course Gillenormand is most interested in mixed bathing trends across the Channel!
> 
> (4) TOILERS:  
> In this chapter, Fr. Ebenezer Clubin is an analogue of Ebenezer Caudray, the young priest referenced in _Toilers_ ; also from _Toilers_ is Sieur Clubin, the Durande’s wily ship’s captain, who comes to an untimely end. Fr. Clubin’s treatise on the legend of the Pieuvre of Soldier's Bay is taken from Hugo’s treatise on the superstitions of the Guernseyfolk and the anatomy of the devil-fish in _Toilers_ , 1.5.4 and 2.4.2 respectively.
> 
> The implication that the pieuvre seizes the men naked for sexual purposes is straight from Hugo: see _Toilers_ , 2.4.4: _There were no remains of clothing anywhere visible. The man must have been seized naked._
> 
> Hugo also (very creepily) says this, about the Pieuvre:  
>  _“These animals are indeed phantoms as much as monsters. They are proved and yet improbable. They are the amphibia of the shore which separates life from death. Their unreality makes their existence puzzling. They touch the frontier of man's domain and people the region of chimeras. We deny the possibility of the vampire, and the cephaloptera appears. Their swarming is a certainty which disconcerts our confidence. Optimism, which is nevertheless in the right, becomes silenced in their presence. They form the visible extremity of the dark circles. They mark the transition of our reality into another. They seem to belong to that commencement of terrible life which the dreamer sees confusedly through the loophole of the night.”_


	4. St. Peter Port to Havelet Bay

Javert woke to the sound of water rushing in his ears, surrounding him with inexorable noise. 

For an agonising moment, he thought he was back in the Seine, drowning — held down by the current, and a greedy, destructive, inhuman force, and his own self-hatred.

“Javert,” murmured a soft voice. Jean Valjean: who had held him in the river, who was here now holding him in his bed.

Javert took in deep gulps of air. He was safely above the water, in his attic room in St. Peter Port. The sound of water was the ocean’s roar, coming through the window that overlooked Havelet Bay. 

“I dreamed…” His voice did not sound like his own. He tried again. “The Seine. Before you came. Something had caught hold of me, was holding me down.” 

He shook his head, trying to remember. Surely such a thing could not have occurred that June night? His mind must have been infected by Fr. Clubin’s stories of devil-fish and pieuvres large enough to wreck ships, perverse enough to strip sailors of their clothes and violate and then consume them.

Valjean frowned. “Now that you mention it… I remember flashes, too, of something in the Seine when I rescued you. It was as if I had to fight it for you. Can you remember?” 

“I remember the cold, the confusion, being furious with you and with myself, remember wanting to end it all. I remember drowning — but of a creature? Nothing. Perhaps we dreamed it. I hope so. That priest’s stories have entered into my head, and yours as well.” 

Valjean put his hand on Javert’s chest. With some difficulty, he said, “I wish I could take the memory of that time away from you.”

Javert closed his eyes. If he looked at Valjean’s unguarded tenderness for an instant longer, he would not be able to keep his composure.

“I need to remember,” he said thickly. He could not ever forget the mercy he had been shown. He needed to always remember the lowest point of his life, so that he would never so mistreat anyone else again.

So that Valjean would not press the point further, he reached out to Valjean and kissed his mouth, trying to lose himself in the comfort of that familiar body. Valjean took his hardening prick with that large convict's hand, pressed it against Valjean's own ruddy length, and began to stroke them together urgently. Javert groaned and dug his fingers into Valjean's shoulders and thrust up into Valjean's fist. When he approached his orgasm he flung his forearm over his face so that Valjean could not watch him come apart with guilty pleasure. 

Valjean released soon after, panting; he had been waiting for Javert to spend first, an act of unselfishness that shamed Javert.

Javert collapsed under Valjean's bulk. He felt wrung out, as if he could sleep for days. 

He felt Valjean lean in to kiss his eyelids and heard him sigh. “You always withhold from me,” Valjean murmured, almost to himself.

Valjean sounded regretful. Javert wasn't surprised — he had never belonged to another and had spent almost all of his life alone; he would hardly be enough for any companion, even one as generous as Valjean. 

"It will soon be dawn," Javert said, to change the subject. 

They rose stealthily as day broke over the sky and sea, filling Javert’s attic room with light. Then Valjean put on his dressing gown and readied himself for the furtive climb down to his first floor room.

Javert watched him stop for a long moment in the doorway between bedroom and writing-room. "What is it?" Javert called.

"That picture," Valjean said slowly. "Has it changed, do you think?"

Javert got out of bed and approached the painting of the rocky beach and the sea. 

"Was that boat not always there?" he asked. A trick of the perspective, maybe, but it looked as if the boat was now closer to the shore than how he remembered it. And now it did not look like a boat at all.

"I had thought not," Valjean said. "Also, the cave on the far side of the picture that seems to be lighted up? I am not sure it was before. That is quite odd."

Slowly, Javert felt the hackles on his neck rise. When Valjean left to climb back down the stairs, Javert closed the door tightly. Against what, exactly, he could not say. 

 

*

 

Javert spent the next days walking the paths of the island at Valjean's side. They paced the cobbled, narrow streets of St. Peter Port and took in the sights. They visited the local markets in the French Halls and Fountain Street, where Javert was compelled to stop a little boy from what he later learned from Ozanne was the increasingly widespread local practice of basket-lifting.

They also walked along the cliffs as far south as the Pleinmont Headland, where under a clear sky they could see Jersey and the French coast, as well as the Hanways lighthouse, where according to Fr Clubin the _Jean Auberge_ had been last sighted. Their rambles took them on the cliff paths to the north and the greater distance to the flatter west coast, always accompanied by the sound of the sea.

After a few days, Cosette joined them. Marius had been tasked with reviewing the books and details of the shipbuilding business which Paul Ozanne was seeking to purchase in St. Peter Port, and was keen to make headway before his client arrived on the island. M. Gillenormand was spending his days visiting with Mme. Ozanne at Les Varendes. Valjean had mentioned to Javert that after two afternoons of stilted drawing-room conversation Cosette was ready for more activity. 

As such Cosette accompanied them on their meanderings, although she was not keen to attempt the greater distances or steeper paths. Carrying her summer parasol, hand through Valjean's arm, she kept up a running commentary about the birds, flora, and fauna on the island.

Javert expected the presence of his beloved daughter to brighten Valjean's countenance. But Valjean seemed unusually distant in her presence. He responded less than he ordinarily did in response to her remarks, and Javert did not fail to notice he had less appetite at mealtimes. Javert did not know what to make of it.

"Papa, are you not feeling well?" Cosette asked across the table of the Baroque-style dining room at No. 38. 

The chandelier was dim, but Javert could not fail to see the look of discomfort pass over Valjean's face. "My dear, I am just not used to the rich food, that is all."

"We are not going back to the days of eating black bread," Cosette said teasingly.

For some reason Valjean flushed at Cosette's words, which also mystified Javert. In their house at Rue Plumet, Valjean ate white bread purchased from the nearby patisserie. True, he bought it because he thought Javert liked it. Perhaps if left to his own devices, Valjean would not feel he deserved white bread, or any bread at all.

Valjean's lack of appetite at the dining table was not accompanied by a similar lack in the bedroom. In Javert's arms it seemed as if Valjean was searching desperately for something, some retribution or redress that was just out of his reach.

The night Javert had occasion to use the salve they had brought with them from Paris. When he breached Valjean's body with slick fingers, the man made a broken, lonely sound that Javert had never heard before. Afterwards Javert tasted salt on his friend's weathered face, and he was none the wiser as to the origins of Valjean's private grief or desire.

In the morning, Javert glared at the picture in the writing-room, but the boat, or whatever it was, had not moved.

 

*

 

The weekend arrived and Marius was released from his duties. As the weather was fair, Cosette suggested they have a picnic hamper packed and engage a small pleasure boat from Havelet Bay to take them around the island. 

M. Gillenormand declared that he was not in a temper for picnicking and declined to accompany them, but Javert thought a day in the sun would lighten Valjean's dark mood. 

Ozanne helped them hire a pilot cutter captained by a young Guernseyan named Duguay and crewed by an even younger lad whose name Javert did not catch. 

Duguay steered them out to sea and southward. The sky was cloudless, the sea like glass. The small cutter was steady in the gentle waves. Javert was not given to superlatives or descriptions of beauty, but he would admit the day was a fine one, and that it was very pleasant in the breeze out at sea. 

Cosette sat on a raised bench in the boat, holding her parasol with one hand and her husband's hand with the other. Marius was regaling his wife with stories, of the townsfolk and Ozanne’s prospective shipbuilding yard. When he thought Valjean was not looking, he ducked under the parasol and Cosette's hat to kiss his wife. 

They dropped anchor a mile or so from the shore, far from the crowded waters off Fermain Bay. At mid-day the picnic lunch was unpacked and Cosette laid out an array of little sandwiches and bread and cheeses and fruit. Under Javert's watchful eye, Valjean ate some cheese and drank from the flask. He had said little all afternoon, and when he was done with the food he moved to the prow of the boat, gazing resolutely into the horizon.

Javert followed him. He wanted to place his arm around Valjean, to take his hand, but could not risk it in public.

"Is everything well?" he murmured quietly into Valjean's ear, so as not to be overheard.

Valjean did not take his eyes from the place where the sky met the sea. "I am not certain," he said at last, in the same quiet tone. "Something is not right, Javert, although I do not know what it is."

Javert frowned. "Is it because of those stories? Beaches and houses haunted by spirits, that may be appeased by rats without legs and frogs crushed in a Bible? Guernseyans are so superstitious that even their priest believes such tales."

"It is not that, or not just that," Valjean whispered. "I dreamed ... we have been dreaming — of the water, of creatures that live in the sea and the river, of a force behind these creatures that seeks to consume us. That says I am unworthy, that says I seek oblivion, that wishes to help me find it." 

Javert felt cold everywhere, despite the day's warmth. His friend's self-abnegation, his humility, clearly knew no bounds. 

"Jean, such voices are false. You must know how important you are — to your daughter and son-in-law, and to me. You are worthy, you are very much valued. Let no consuming creature that lives in your dreams say otherwise." 

"Is that really the case, though?" Valjean asked quietly. "Cosette would be better off knowing the truth, as you always tell me. And the truth is that she would indeed be better off without me. You will not tell me so, but that does not make it false."

The grief in Valjean's voice shook Javert to the core. "How can you say that?" he began, and then the sea began to boil.

Out of nowhere, the ocean was seized with fierce waves and a seething current. The sky grew dark, a howling wind whipping through the sails, Valjean and Javert were thrown against the rails as the little boat yawed and juddered violently.

Behind them, Javert heard the crewmen's fearful exclamations, heard Cosette calling for her father. Beside him, Valjean had gone stone-still.

Grasping the rail, Javert stared into the sea. The boiling seemed to be resolving into a slow, fermenting spiral, as if some massive creature was rising from the deeps.

"Lord save us," Marius breathed. Valjean had stopped breathing entirely. 

The boat reared over a wave and then lurched sharply to one side — Javert knew next to nothing about vessels, but it felt like the anchor had suddenly come free. He whipped around to look for Duguay, who was cowering on his knees at the aft of the vessel.

"Ah, it is the Leviathan," the wretch cried. "It is too terrible. Mercy, mercy!"

Javert staggered over to the boy at the helm and dragged him to his feet. "Get the anchor!" he shouted. "And pull yourself together, we need to leave this place!"

Duguay gulped back his sobs and scrambled to assist. Between the three of them, they wrestled the anchor back on board and started to cast for shore, trying to pull away from the menacing boil of the ocean. The sea roared, the cutter was gripped by a corkscrewing, spiralling current, from which even Javert knew there could be no escape —

— and suddenly, as quickly as it had descended, the roiling current was gone.

The small boat floated freely, bobbing on the remains of the disturbed waves. The darkness lifted rapidly, and the sky was once again an untroubled blue. 

Slowly, Marius and Cosette unlocked their embrace to stare at their surroundings. "What an adventure!" Marius exclaimed, in a voice that only shook slightly.

"We are saved," Cosette said in relief. Marius retrieved her parasol, and she re-opened it over her head.

Javert was not entirely sure. Duguay was still as white as a sheet and as silent as the helmsman steered the vessel back toward Havelet Bay. 

Valjean was white, too. When Javert cast aside any pretence at propriety and put a comforting arm around him, he was stiff and unresponsive. 

Javert thought he heard Valjean whisper, "It came for me," but it could have been the sound of the waves on the nearing shore.

 

***

 

Valjean had been fearful before — in Arras; on the road from Montfermeil when fleeing arrest with Cosette's life in his hands — but not quite in this way. This fear came from somewhere deep and dark within him. He was not certain of anything beyond the need for flight: to leave St. Peter Port, to leave Guernsey, to leave the ocean beyond Guernsey that spoke to him of belonging, that spoke to him of an ending. 

After the business with the boat, the party quickly left the harbour. Valjean paid the poor captain, pale and shivering from the experience and muttering under his breath. "The Leviathan! The Ocean!" he said to himself, and Valjean could not help but shiver also. 

Such was the resilience of youth that Marius and Cosette seemed relatively unscathed by the afternoon's experiences. Marius handed the picnic things to the servant at No. 38, a Guernseyan lady named Sarest. He then settled Cosette in the drawing room and had half surmounted the staircase when Valjean raised his hand.

"A moment of your time, Marius."

Marius paused on the steps. "Yes, Father?"

Valjean swallowed. It was always difficult to hear Marius call him by that name, for the man Marius knew as his father-in-law was Ultime Fauchelevent. 

"Our experience today... I believe it was a sign that we are not welcome here. I would like us to leave the island as soon as we can."

Marius' jaw dropped, and in his peripheral vision Valjean could see Cosette also staring at him in disbelief. 

Finally Marius stammered, "Sir, you cannot truly believe what just occurred was some supernatural sign. It must have been a happenstance of Nature. The sea is naturally strange and there are so many things science has yet to explain about its depths."

"That may be so," Valjean said, calmly, as if his heart were not beating urgently in his chest, "but what occurred was no mere happenstance. It was unnatural, and I am convinced we should take flight."

Marius came back down the stairs. His jaw was set, the cast of his shoulders defensive. "You may be thusly convinced," he said, "but I am not. Forgive me, Father, but I feel you are jumping at shadows which are of no real import." 

Valjean felt this comment as a sharp wound. Had his haunted past reduced him to a fearful old man, terrified by his own shadow? 

"Even if that is so," he said, slowly, "indulge an old man. I wish for us all to return home."

Marius walked towards him. He made as if to clasp Valjean's hands, and then looked as though he thought the better of it when he saw what was in Valjean's face. "I am sorry, Father, but my business is not complete. I must stay here until M. Ozanne arrives on the island and I tender to him my diligence report on the shipping business he wishes to purchase. I am not in a position to leave."

Valjean felt Marius' resolution weigh upon him like a blow. Heavily, he turned to his daughter, the child for whom he had decided to strive all his life, for whom he had chosen to live.

"In that case, I would ask Cosette to leave with me. My child, it is not safe here."

Cosette had taken her hat off, and her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders in the same way as it had when she was a girl. But there was nothing girlish in the flash of her eyes as she said, "Papa, I am not going."

Valjean looked into her determined gaze. Those fearless eyes had never been clouded by the shadows of the past, from which Valjean had sought all her life to shield her. It was small wonder that she did not understand fear or the need for flight.

"Please, my dear. You are too young, you do not know... but trust me, I wish this for your own safety."

Cosette said steadily, "I trusted you when we fled to the convent, and when you said we had to go to London. You didn't tell me why then, and you are doing the same thing now."

The query, the almost-accusation, was clear in her face. Valjean could not see a way past it. The little girl who trusted and believed in him unquestioningly was no more; this was a woman who did not need her father any longer.

Marius approached her and touched her elbow timidly. "Cosette, perhaps your father is right. For your own protection, you should go with him."

"No," said Cosette, with a proud lift of her chin. She glared at Marius. "I do not need anyone's protection. I know my place is with my husband. I am staying here with you."

If Marius' words had wounded Valjean deeply, Cosette's cut him to the heart. His chest felt the constraint of thick ropes, binding his lungs like a vise. Without a word Valjean brushed past Marius to take to the stairs, turning his back on the party for the privacy of his rooms.

 

*

 

Valjean took his hat and jacket off and sat on the bed. He stared at the Chinese chest in which he had hidden the valise. After a beat, he uncovered it, took it up, and then set it back down again inside the chest. 

He could hardly think over the incessant pounding in his head. Dimly he saw that his hands were shaking, and his hands never shook.

When the knock at his door came Valjean at first could not hear it over the loud noise of the blood in his veins. The knock came again, and the door opened to admit the tall figure of Javert.

Javert walked into the room, shut the door behind him and seated himself beside Valjean on the bed.

"Do you truly believe we are in danger?" he asked. 

Javert's deep voice calmed the turmoil within enough that Valjean could take hold of himself again. He searched the dark haze in his mind.

"Yes, I fear so. The spirit that reached out to us today, in the form of the leviathan: it is real. I believe it is the same spirit that reached to me in Toulon, that marked me for its own." He could not suppress his shudder. "I am afraid it will not rest until it claims me, and until that time you are all at risk."

Javert digested this for a moment. "Then I agree, we should leave."

Valjean felt a moment of dizzying relief, and then once again the wave of despair crashed down upon him. "I cannot leave Cosette behind in this place. Even if I am gone beyond the ocean's dominion, she will still be here within its reach, and may be in even more danger."

Javert took his hand in a firm grasp. "Then you need to tell her about Toulon," his friend said to him steadily. "Convince her the danger is real."

This was another ice-cold wave that submerged him. "I cannot tell her about my past, Javert."

"For the love of God," Javert said despairingly. "She will not reject you, I know it and so do you."

"I cannot run that risk," Valjean murmured with half-numb lips. "If I tell her about Toulon, I must be prepared to leave her forever."

Javert tugged at his whiskers. "I cannot believe that you still feel this way!" he said. "And even if that is so, I cannot believe you would be prepared to leave _me_."

"I do not wish to leave either of you," Valjean said, haltingly. He heard the echo of hurt in Javert's voice and was unsure what he had done to cause it. It was so difficult to think when all was dark and suffocatingly cold within him. 

Javert said, with deliberate calm, "You say you do not, and yet you have brought that with you." He nodded towards the Chinese chest, the lid of which was open, the valise visible atop the pile of sheets. "I am not a fool, I can guess what it contains. Papers, money, things you would wish to have with you in London." 

"That is not what is within," Valjean said miserably. "It holds a memento of Cosette's childhood. You would not understand."

"Indeed, I do not," Javert said, his voice cold. Valjean could not tell if Javert thought he was lying or that he was being foolishly sentimental. 

Valjean said slowly: "In any case, I should not keep this token of the past. Cosette would not understand it. That past disgraces her; she would be clearly better off without it, and without me."

"You said that in the boat," Javert said. He got to his feet, rising to his full height. "How can you think so little of Cosette? How can you think so little of me?"

Valjean could not gainsay this, had no response to this. Mutely he stared up at Javert. The ocean had filled his throat and lungs and mind with endless night.

Finally Javert shook his head, and walked to the door. On the threshold he muttered, "You always want to flee, that is the thing you know best."

After Javert had left the room, Valjean sat by himself for a long while, until the afternoon sun left the window and night descended like a coffin into the earth.

Valjean was not sure how it had happened, but clearly his fear of the past, his jealousy of Cosette's company, had caused hurt to the generous companion of his life. Javert had been right to withhold from him, to not trust him with his heart, given how untrustworthy Valjean had proven to be. As for Cosette, Valjean's own selfishness clearly knew no limits. She now had no need of any shelter a fugitive could offer, and he had no decent cause to keep holding on to her in this way. 

Valjean felt the darkness within him; it seemed as if he had yearned toward it for more than half of his life. For Cosette's sake he had struggled against it, had allowed himself to be convinced to live for her. Now it seemed he would be permitted to stop struggling.

He knew what it was he had to do, for the sake of the two souls he loved. 

 

*

 

The night was dark; a thick cloud covered the stars. There was very little light to the steep cliff path, but Valjean's steps were unerring. Despite the dark haze in his mind, his body did not falter. It knew where it had to go.

In his mind was the picture that hung in the look-out room of No. 38 that overlooked Havelet Bay. The lighthouse was the Hanways tower which had lured the _Jean Auberge_ to its demise, the rocky shore that of Soldier's Bay, the illuminated cave the place in the cliffs that waited for him.

He let the ocean's roar guide him — the sound of the sea on the shore, the pounding of the waves in his body.

The tide had come in, and he had to wade in water to his calves in order to reach the entrance to the labyrinth of caves. He took off his boots, and, after a brief pause, his waistcoat and shirt and trousers. Unencumbered by all clothing, he slipped easily through the opening in the cliff face.

It was as if he had entered another world, lit with fluorescent mosses and waving plants, filled with swirling water that was warm against his bare flesh and brimming with tiny fish with even tinier teeth, and gelatinous jellyfish that were themselves lit from within. 

Valjean pressed on through the first cave and the next, and the one beyond it, in water up to his waist, then his thighs, then his chest. He felt the sharpness of the spines and teeth of the fish against his stomach muscles, the sparks from the jellyfish against his inner thighs. Soon he came to the long passageway. At the end of the passage was a cave that glowed like it was full of lightning.

Valjean traversed the passage in slow, dream-like strides, the walls of the passage illuminating his way. He passed into briny water up to his shoulders, and then his throat. The mouth of the glowing cave was almost entirely under the water.

He took a deep breath, and entered the cave. 

The underwater world was almost entirely dark, and he was not alone. The sharp-toothed fishes were there, the bright jellyfish, and slithering lightning-filled eels as thick around as his arm. But there was something else at the end of the cave: a massive, many-armed presence.

When he swam into the cave, it unfurled itself to its full length in a grotesque welcome.

Valjean tasted fear. It tasted like the sea, like the stale breath of the devil-fish that had kissed him a decade ago in the waters off Toulon. Together with that fear, he felt an urgent, burgeoning pull, like a fish hook in his breast-bone that drew him onward and inward — a fervid craving for release and rest.

The presence reached out to him, its many arms twining around his body to possess him, and once again there were the mandibles that pressed against his mouth. Valjean drank down the air that was proffered, and felt the ocean fill his body to the brim and his flesh rise to meet it. 

His mind, also, was filled to the brim — with nothing but l’Océan, the consuming force of the sea and its creatures, the yawning of the abyss.

_We see how you have come to us freely once more. You have proven yourself unworthy of love: as we foretold, the child has left you. Give yourself to us, be ours, finally and forever._

There was a slide of tumescent flesh against his, and Valjean's thighs were forced apart inexorably by the circling arms, the tendrils opening him with terrible care. 

He felt the words forced, also, from his mind. _Yes. I am yours. It would be best for those I love if I were to be consumed. Do what you will with me, and then let me rest._

There was a susurrus of approval, a thick not-sound that lapped against his heated flesh. L’Océan held and stroked him almost tenderly, thrust into him so gently that he could almost believe it was Javert inside him, familiar and longed for. With a pang, Valjean set aside his ache for the companion of his heart. He needed to be unselfish at the last so as to assure Javert’s safety.

The creature's sensuous movements stilled, and L’Océan fell silent. When it spoke again, it was with the sly darkness of the abyss. 

_It seems the desire for life and love flickers in you still. You are ours now — let us instead transform you into that which destroys in its turn._

There was a rushing of tides around him and within his bones and blood, down his windpipe and under his skin. Valjean felt his body consumed and overtaken by the dark. 

Then the monstrous blossoming, a propagation of swollen limbs and gills and suckers. He felt his flesh stretch hideously and burst, felt his innards fold into themselves, and then he no longer had vocal cords or throat with which to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Guernsey details! Thanks to Esteven, it seems basket lifting in [Guernsey markets](http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/guernsey/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8395000/8395572.stm) was quite a thing, and one which [Javert might disapprove of](http://www.priaulxlibrary.co.uk/articles/article/basket-lifting-1833-perils-having-nothing-better-do)... 
> 
>  
> 
> [A historical map of Guernsey!](https://williamdenicher.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/cochrane-map-1835.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> [Many](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Channel_pilot_cutter) [notes](http://www.workingsail.co.uk/building-pilot-cutters/our-philosophy1/) from my experienced historical-sailing consultant on [Bristol Channel pilot cutters](http://www.guernseypilotage.com/index_files/Page3279.htm) in use in the early to mid 19th century.


	5. The Caverns of Pieuvre Bay

One set of ropes cut free, one request acceded to, one offer of surrender that he could not accept, and he was falling from the parapet at Quai de Gêvres under a cloudy night sky, into the river.

The suffocating emptiness was too big for his body. He was unworthy: he had failed the Law, failed Authority, failed everything he had believed in. His orderly world and his life had been nothing but a falsehood. Here he would end both — under crushing weight, gasping, sinking, unable to swim, wrestling in the agony of drowning and death.

His lungs were filling with cruel water, his mind with even more cruel failure. It seemed God, that terrible new master he finally acknowledged, would deny him even the mercy of unconsciousness. 

And then there was a voice in his head, in the water, as vast as the sea and sky.

_Here too is l’Océan, in the river between humans and harbours. You have come freely into our domain, the abyss. You are unworthy, you belong to no one, you have realised your ignorant toil is worthless and now seek this ending. Come to us, be ours, let us consume you, and then you can rest as you wish._

An aberrant sensation seized him, a press of unnatural flesh against his clothes, taking possession of his body like a rushing current. Javert’s body was failing, his spirit was failing. _Yes,_ he thought. He belonged to no one; he was manifestly unworthy; he indeed wished to rest.

His mind started to shut down, blessedly, so he almost did not realise an arm had closed around him— a human arm, for all its unnatural strength. It tugged at him in opposition to the inhuman force, and over the ringing in his head was the sound of an unmistakably human voice.

_This man belongs to me. He is worthy to me. Take me, and let him go._

There was a thrashing cacophony of shrieking almost-sound, exclamations of _you! We know you_ , and dimly Javert felt a ripping sensation as the river-creature flung him loose.

As consciousness faded, he thought he heard a last, reluctant thought from the monster: _Take him, then, but do not forget: you are ours, you will always be ours, you will return._

Consciousness returned slowly, painfully. He lay on wet cobblestones, no longer in the grip of the river. Despite his best efforts, he had not been destroyed. Someone’s mouth was on his, filling him with air, breathing him back to life. _Valjean_ : enemy, saviour – claiming him when no one would.

 

*

 

Javert sat bolt upright in bed, and realised two things at once.

First: that he had indeed been attacked in the Seine by the force which menaced them now; that Valjean had driven l’Océan away; that he had managed to do so by offering himself for Javert.

Second: that he was alone in his bed. Valjean had not come to him in the night.

Javert pulled on his dressing-gown, and was arrested by the sight of the picture in the writing-room. It had altered unmistakably. The lighthouse shone on the rocky beach, the lit cave was once again darkened, and there was no sign of the boat, or whatever it was, in the water. 

He cursed himself for an imbecile and took the stairs two at a time. The house was silent and sleeping. Valjean's room was empty, his bed unslept in. But the valise was still in the chest, hidden under the linens. 

There were two notes on the dresser in Valjean's handwriting, one addressed to Cosette and the other to Javert. 

Javert tore open the one that bore his name, and he opened Cosette's also for good measure. The notes were largely identical: they said that Valjean has decided to leave for England on the first ship, that his heart was too full for goodbyes, that he would write again when he found a permanent abode in London.

Javert imagined Cosette might shed tears of bewilderment on reading the note. Certainly Marius would, and would blame himself besides. 

Javert himself, however, was not fooled by such subterfuge. He well knew Valjean had not left for England, and when he could think again, he realised where Valjean had gone instead.

 

*

 

The night was black as pitch. The clouds in the sky obscured the moon and stars. Still, Javert had always managed to see keenly in the dark, and his swift steps did not falter. He had seized the poker by the fireplace to use as a weapon, although even pistols would likely be insufficient against a supernatural monster from the ocean deep. 

As he descended rapidly to the beach at high tide, he realised he had stopped swearing at his own blindness and stupidity. Instead, he had started praying. _Let me find him, let me not be too late._

The sight of Valjean's familiar garments at the mouth of the cave pulled him up short. This was exactly what l’Océan's victims had allegedly always left behind — only clothes and worldly possessions, not even bones to bury.

With shaking hands, Javert ripped off his own boots and the coat he had flung over his nightshirt, and plunged into the watery cave.

The caverns looked nothing like Javert remembered. They were lit from within by strange efflorescences: lurid green on the rocks beneath the water, luminous blue in the cracks on the walls, purple and porphyry climbing the lofty ceiling. Intermittent starlight could be seen through the opening in the cave roof — it seemed as if, within this labyrinth, the clouds and the world outside had ceased to exist. 

Javert restrained himself from shouting Valjean's name until his voice cracked. In any case, his throat was so dry that he was not certain he could make a sound. 

He hurtled through the caves until he found the passageway. Lit green and blue, the water filled with strange small fish and sea-creatures, it seemed to yaw treacherously from side to side. Javert dashed his free hand over his eyes, rubbing them, and tried to refocus. _Where are you?_

Despite the nightmarish lighting, the passageway was as he remembered it, bracketed with caves and recesses on either side and filled with varying depths of water. 

The poker in his hand caught in a low recess that stretched obliquely under the mid-point of the passage. Javert stooped to the waterline to peer into the recess, and started back violently when he saw something smiling.

He steeled himself to duck completely into the opening, lit by the eerie green light of the passageway. Poker outstretched, he entered a low niche with rocky projections, narrow as a crypt, filled with a multitude of crabs that scattered as he approached.

There was indeed something smiling: a skull. More than a head, an entire skeleton, lying in this crypt-like space that had indeed become a tomb.

Javert fought back an anguished sound. This was not Valjean, this pile of clean-picked vertebrae and thigh bones and tibias; this poor wretch had been here for years — long enough for the rib-cage where his heart had once beat to be filled now with crabs and limpets, for green mould to have settled around the eye sockets and the grinning teeth. 

Javert compelled himself to take a deep breath, the first taken in this narrow cave within the rocks for years. All was still, but for the quickness of his heart.

With an unsteady hand, Javert extended the poker toward the skeleton, dislodging the mass of crabs and sea-limpets. There were no remains of clothing anywhere visible; either the cloth had rotted away over the years, or this man must have been seized naked.

Around the vertebral column was a length of leather which had evidently been worn as a belt. The leather was moist and deteriorating from the elements, the buckle rusted shut. 

Javert took up the belt, which had a pocket containing a little iron box and several pieces of gold. The box had rusted shut, also; within it was a wad of bank-notes in sterling pounds, more than any one man ought to legitimately carry, badly degraded by the years despite the iron’s protection. Then he turned the belt over. The crumbling leather, which had originally been polished outside, was rough within. Upon this some letters had been traced in black thick ink. 

Legible under the green light were the words, "SIEUR CLUBIN".

Javert tried to calm his rising heartbeat. So this was what had happened to the Captain of the _Durande_ — he had indeed been seized by the Pieuvre in the deep sea, and his body had been dragged here to its lair, this labyrinth of caves upon the rocks of Soldier's Bay.

Javert replaced the belt and its contents back on top of the skeleton. Perhaps Sieur Clubin’s widow, or his strange cousin, would appreciate the return of the Captain’s things and this suspicious roll of bank-notes, but it might be better to leave all past sins entombed here with the man himself.

Javert ducked back out of the niche holding Clubin’s remains, and found the cave at the end of the passageway was glowing: emerald under the sickly green and blue light.

The creatures in the water were glowing, too, the strange eels and little crabs and tiny fish with teeth. The water had risen while he was in the niche, now reaching his waist.

Javert knew a summons when he received one. He sent up a desperate prayer for strength. _Be safe_ , he said silently to Valjean. _I am coming_. 

The entrance to the cave was a large elliptical arch, almost entirely submerged in the water. Javert took hold of his courage, and took the plunge.

Almost immediately the automatic panic set in — an instinct to thrash about under the crushing weight. For an instant he had the sensation of drowning in the Seine again, his lungs filling with water and failure.

Javert thrust the panic away through sheer force of will: Valjean could not afford for him to fail.

He opened his eyes. He could see dimly in the eerie brackish water, enough to make out the outlines of a vast cavern, stretching out before him like an extraordinary palace of shadows. Dark grottos and spiralling columns on either side, luminescent with the gem-like vegetation gave the depths an eerie glow. Above him was the vaulted roof of the cave forming a rude arch over his head; beneath his feet were stones, polished and slippery.

Javert held his breath, moved his arms in an approximation of swimming. He was seized by the waters, by the little creatures in the water, drawing him deeper into the innermost parts of the cavern as if it was a sanctuary, or a sacrificial altar.

And, in the heart of the sanctuary, upon the sacrificial altar, was a mass of darkness, a many-limbed thing from the abyss.

If terror was the object of its creation, nothing could have been more perfect than this creature.

Javert felt himself captured by the wrist. An indescribable horror coursed through him.

In a flash, living flesh had twisted itself around the arm that held the poker, its pressure like a tightening cord, winding around his wrist and elbow until it reached his bicep. It was supple, strong, and hot as a furnace.

A second shape darted towards him like a tongue out of grotesque jaws. It seemed to lick against his wet body. Then it stretched out over his skin and wound itself around his chest. Javert felt upon his skin a multitude of flat circular points; they were suckers which fastened wetly to his undefended flesh.

A third limb, long and undulating, seemed to feel its way about his body like a snake and then lashed itself around his ribs; a fourth wound itself sinuously around his waist.

Javert cried out despite himself, and bubbles of air escaped his lips. The dark forms entangled him in a fearsome grasp. He still had one arm loose, but it was impossible for him to tear away the bands that were twisted around his body. Surely this was the same loathsome Devil-fish, the same Pieuvre, who had carried off Sieur Clubin, who had bound and violated the Captain's naked form in the same way as it sought to devour him now.

He began to fight in earnest, bare feet slipping on the stones, breath sliding helplessly from him in gouts. He felt two further limbs wind themselves around his legs, creeping up his thighs and holding him in place so he could hardly move. He had come here to rescue Valjean from this evil, but clearly he had failed, and was now marked for the same fate.

All at once, a large, bulbous mass approached him. It was the centre of the creature, the six tentacles attached to it like the spokes of a ship’s wheel, the remaining two tightly anchored to the rocks below. In the middle of this fulsome mass appeared two round eyes, which were fixed on Javert.

Amidst the hot clanging inside his mind, Javert thought he heard a voice speaking his name.

There was something familiar in those flat, monstrous, alien eyes.

Slowly, Javert realised the limbs that held him were not hurting him — the bands around his chest and ribs did not seek to crush the life from him; the suckers on the undersides of the tentacles were not piercing his clothes and skin to draw out his blood. The tightness in his lungs had been caused by the loss of air from his own exertions, not from the monster’s constrictions, and even now the dark mass drew close to him almost hesitantly, nudging at his face and lips. 

A second ago he would have screamed, expelling all the breath in his lungs, and inhaled water, and drowned. Now he closed his eyes, felt a hard swelling insert itself into his mouth, and his lungs were filled with blessed, life-giving air.

He felt the tentacles around his body loosen their grip, holding him lightly, gently. A feather-light ribbon brushed against his face and ran a familiar caress through the hair that had come loose in the current.

In his mind, words began to form. _You came._

Javert did not quite dare to believe that Valjean had not been destroyed, that he was still alive. That he had been transformed into this. 

_Is it truly you?_ he thought, tried hesitantly to send it from his mind to that of the other.

 _I believe so,_ came the response, the words carrying the sonorous sound of Valjean’s speaking voice, and finally Javert allowed himself to hope again.

 _Jean,_ he sent. Relief caught in his chest; he grasped at the warm, undulating surface of the limbs that held him. _Thank God. You are alive._

The mind-voice hesitated, and then Valjean sent back: _This … is worse than death._

 _No, it is not,_ Javert thought, fiercely. He felt the life coil in the muscular tentacles that encircled him. _What matters to me is that you live._

The tentacles loosened even further, save for the one curled around his hair. _I am so sorry,_ Valjean sent. _I should never have come here. At first everything was so clear, I was going to give myself to the ocean, to free you!_ The tentacle rubbed against Javert’s cheek, approximating the familiar movement of Valjean’s thumb. _But then this happened, and I realised what I had done... I never meant to place you in harm’s way._

 _It is I who should be sorry,_ Javert sent, slowly. _I should have realised this thing would have had you in its power from earlier in the boat, and would have compelled you to come here. I should never have argued with you; I should never have left you alone._

With some difficulty, Javert stopped himself from resuming the swearing. Blaming himself might feel satisfying, but was monumentally unhelpful under the circumstances. 

_You could not have known, Javert._

Javert scowled to himself. It was intolerable that his friend was trying to comfort _him_ , when he, Javert, had caused this fate — by his idiotic pride and insecurity, and now this blindness that had driven Valjean into the arms of l’Océan.

When the frond stroked his brow, he realised belatedly that Valjean could hear those inner musings, too, even though Javert did not articulate them. _This is not your fault,_ Valjean sent. _This pride, this fear, these things you blame yourself for? I see them now in your mind, and they hold no fear for me. You have never needed to withhold yourself from me. I was afraid…_

 _What were you afraid of?_ Javert asked, quietly, when Valjean's thoughts trailed away.

The response was slow in coming. _You held yourself back, before, and I was afraid it was because you still feared to trust me, that I was not worthy of you._

Javert found a tightness in his chest. _That is not so,_ he sent. _It is my own foolishness, in believing that I would never be enough for you, that you would never wish to be mine as you wished to be Cosette’s. Forgive me._

 _There is nothing to forgive,_ Valjean sent, and the yielding tentacles around Javert’s body moved restlessly, sliding across his chest and hips and limbs. _You are enough, more than enough. And I will always wish to be yours._

Javert’s heartbeat, which had slowed from its frantic pounding under his ribs, started to speed again. Slowly, an inkling of an idea began to take root in his fevered mind — born of his dream of the river, and Valjean claiming him from l’Océan that night.

He opened his eyes; he gazed into the dark eyes of the pieuvre, and his beloved companion looked despairingly back.

 _Believe that you are worthy, that I will always wish to be yours, in whatever form you take,_ he sent, and he stroked the strange limbs around his chest and belly, the surfaces warm and ductile beneath his fingers, in the same way as he would map Valjean's body with the wide span of his hands. 

Distantly, he felt a responsive shiver of pleasure that was not his own, a reverberating echo in his mind and along his own limbs. The dusky flesh of the creature flushed under his hands, the colour swelling where he touched and then receding, the same ruddy hue as Valjean's shaft when it was fully roused.

 _Javert,_ Valjean murmured. _This is ..._ He could not form the words, but the cloud of sensation that filled Javert's mind left Javert in no doubt of how his caresses were being received.

 _Different, but it pleases me even so,_ Javert sent. _Touch me._

Hesitantly, the tendril traced his jawline and lingered at the edge of Javert’s lips. _Even in this form?_

Javert shivered at the touch. _Even in this form, like this, I am yours._

Valjean watched him with those same eyes that could always read the flush of Javert's skin. The tentacle followed the line of his throat down the collar of his shirt, sliding across his chest hair and curling over an undefended nipple. _Like this?_ Valjean asked, as a suction cup fastened to the hardening nub and tugged gently; he doubtless already knew from the flare of pleasure that leaped from Javert's mind to his.

 _Yes. Touch me again,_ Javert sent. In answer, the encircling limbs shifted, undulating, against the thin fabric of his clothes, and then slid underneath, against bare skin. Javert wrenched his shirt loose and the tentacles followed, undressing him with care, peeling his small clothes from his hips and legs until he was uncovered in the water. 

He kept gazing into Valjean's eyes, his mind filled with an ardent tenderness that was both his and not his. 

A limber tendril slid up his thigh and settled loosely around the curve of his arse. Javert expelled most of the air in his chest in a gasp of pleasure and tasted Valjean's tart breath as it filled him again. 

_Is this to your liking?_ Valjean sent, timidly.

 _Very much,_ Javert sent; his heart was racing, blood rising to every part of him, his breath coming more quickly as he breathed with Valjean's every breath.

The tendrils stroked over his skin more boldly, with Valjean's customary gentleness; they slid across his belly and down his thighs with the firmness of Valjean's big hands and finally curled themselves around his hardening prick. The tentacles were inhumanly hot and turgid, the suckers adhering and releasing against his flesh like softly biting kisses. Javert revelled in a touch both strange and familiar, letting himself be cradled in sensation, feeling his own need rise in a heady cloud and merge with Valjean's own.

Through a haze of desire, he reached out for his beloved friend's transfigured body. _I wish your pleasure also. Show me, Jean._

In response, one of the tentacles twitched; the one curled around Javert's hips, which was swollen and leaking a clear fluid that Javert could feel against his skin. Javert closed his fist around it and felt the blossoming of arousal from Valjean. Javert started to stroke, palming against every groove of that appendage, around its thickening tongue-like ridges, the slick fluid coating his hand. Colour burgeoned under his grasp, patterns swirling over the purple flesh of Valjean’s lower body, and Javert's thoughts were swept up in the heated, wordless pleasure now rising in Valjean's mind.

 _Yes,_ he heard, amid the gathering storm within him and within Valjean; _yes_ , and he heard his name.

Javert realised that Valjean had lifted them both up, that he was floating freely in the murky waters, open shirt fluttering in the current, hair streaming loose around them both. In the same way Javert floated in a sea of thoughts and feelings that were his and also Valjean's. It was so strange to be this open, this undefended, with anyone, and at the same time it was intensely pleasurable. Javert experienced a longing to submerge himself within Valjean, to move beyond boundaries, beyond consciousness, beyond any secret strongholds, to the very heart of his friend. 

So there could be no mistaking his desire, Javert shaped a thought deliberately and sent it to Valjean. _I wish to be yours, in every way._

Valjean pulled the tentacle away from Javert's breast, the loosening suckers tugging against thick hair as they came free, leaving pleasant marks upon his skin and the nubs of his nipples. It joined the other tendril framing Javert's face, curling possessively in his loose hair. _Here? Are you certain?_ Valjean sent, also deliberately.

 _Yes,_ Javert sent, and a tendril shifted around Javert's heavy sack, moving lower. The tentacle stroking his groin wrapped itself more fully around his erection, in a tightening of suckers and muscle that made Javert groan into Valjean's mouth-protrusion. 

_Is this too much?_ Valjean sent, hesitantly.

 _No. It's good_ , Javert sent back. He tightened his own hold on the thick purple appendage, the strange fluid now leaking copiously over his hand. _Open me. Make me yours._

A tremor ran through the tentacles circling his body, through the mind that engulfed his. Temporarily beyond words, Valjean sent him a heated sense-image of Javert being filled top and tail with Valjean, connected in body as well as mind, and for a moment Javert could not breathe through the white-hot surge of his own desire.

Valjean's soft tendrils snaked around Javert's thighs, coaxing them apart, suckers sinking in tightly; the member that had curled around his arse now stroked against his buttocks in feather-light circles.

With one hand, Javert grasped Valjean's upper body, giving himself the leverage to pull himself even closer physically to Valjean. With his other hand Javert gripped the tongue-like appendage, now fully erect and pulsing fluid from its crown, and guided it between his thighs. The other tentacles spread Javert's cheeks open even further, and the appendage began rubbing with that strange slickness at his entrance. 

Javert arched his back, helplessly, trying and failing to thrust into Valjean's clasp, unable to find purchase in the water, Valjean's limbs holding him fast. He moaned in his thoughts and deep in his throat.

 _I have you,_ Valjean sent soothingly. _Open to me, be mine,_ and his other tentacles stroked around Javert's length as the swollen appendage, coated with the strange fluid so different from the seawater, pressed into Javert's hole.

Javert groaned, overcome, as he was stretched open, Valjean's appendage thrusting into him, impaling him. Valjean moved agonisingly slowly, sinking deeper and deeper into Javert's body, other tendrils tightening around Javert's own erection. Javert felt his body juddering from the sensation of muscle coiling and sliding within him, felt himself thrash helplessly in Valjean's embrace; and then Valjean’s length pressed against his prostate, and Javert felt himself go entirely slack with pleasure.

 _Yes, yours,_ he sent, and then he felt Valjean open his mind to him. 

The hot slide of Valjean's thoughts mirrored the slide of his malleable flesh around and inside Javert's body. Javert felt as Valjean felt — the strangeness of so many limbs, sinuous and adhesive and every inch swollen with arousal, the stretch of Javert's body around him so new and an infinite gift, and overlaying this, the brightness of emotions which he might never otherwise have revealed to Javert. 

The pull of Valjean's desire was irresistible, like a rolling wave; it felt as if there were tentacles everywhere, pulling languidly and pressing urgently all at once, taking him and filling him to the hilt. Even more irresistible was the revelation of Valjean's feelings, now transparent in his mind. In his heart of hearts he had always felt a distant second in Valjean's life, unworthy and accommodated only out of the man's own immense generosity... but here, here was an unmistakable depth of devotion that took him by surprise.

He hesitated for one more instant. Then, _No more withholding,_ he sent, and he opened his mind fully to Valjean in his turn, letting Valjean experience all he felt — his longing for the man, this enemy he had lived to hunt and now the companion he could not live without; the dizzying rush of being entered in each opening of his body, of being so full of Valjean he could barely think, of gasping into Valjean's mouth and breathing him in. 

Valjean groaned also, into Javert's mind and his mouth and all along his skin, in a pleasure so intense it was almost pain, pleasure that was not only Valjean's or Javert's own but belonged to the both of them together.

 _And I am yours,_ Valjean sent with some effort. _I did not realise why you had withheld, before — you have always been worthy to me; you have always been enough for me._

Javert sent: _As are you. I would be nothing without you, you have transformed me;_ he opened himself to Valjean's rhythm, feeling the appendage rub circles against his prostate, pulsing with that slickness until he could feel it dripping out of him as the hardness dragged and thrust mercilessly. Other tentacles wrapped themselves firmly around his arse, around his cock, stroking tighter than any fingers could, suckers clinging like kisses and then releasing against his rigid shaft until it too was dripping wet.

Valjean's arousal filled Javert's mind and his body; mindless sounds of abandon at first, and then the words, fierce and hot and loving: _You are enough. You will always be enough. I will never have enough of you._

Javert did not know how he could ever have doubted it, did not doubt it now finally, submerged in Valjean's unguarded emotions and possessed by him in every way. He had finally loosed his own defences, and now started to lose track of himself as pleasure surged through him and began to overtake him. 

They moved together, and Javert was stretched to the edges of himself, unable to hold back, terrified and thrilled that the plunge would change him in the same way as his plunge into the Seine — as if, yet again, Valjean's love would transform him into something new. 

_I am yours,_ he sent, choking, _take me, change me,_ and he was falling over the edge under starlight. His eyes slid half-shut as his release overtook him in ropes of white, painting pearls against Valjean's dark flesh.

A boiling flare in Valjean's mind, in both their minds; there was a thick gush within, warm and overpowering, and a crashing exultation like a storm over the sea.

_You are mine._

And he was, finally, as Valjean had claimed him from the river and every moment since.

Afterwards Javert floated free, clasped in Valjean's embrace, his mind scrubbed clean by the storm. By this dark miracle he had become of one mind and one flesh with Valjean, impossibly sharing his completion and his joy. 

When he could think again, he knew what he had to do. 

He turned from their connection and sent his thoughts into the cavern: into the world underneath their world, to that force of destruction and rebirth.

_Take me in his place. Change me, as he has been changed, and release him. I am his, in any case, as long as I live._

His eyes stung from the water, his throat was burning and his lungs still full of Valjean's breath. The seed from Valjean's climax scorched in his opening and streamed like fire down the inside of his thighs. His skin felt strange, as if it were too small for his body, and for an instant Javert thought he might have truly been transformed as he asked.

Then the ocean answered, salty and vast — a voice that consumed cities and ships and laid waste to the greed and futile labours of men.

 _The difficulty of life results from man’s superstition and prejudice, his rush to destruction,_ it said, as deep as continents. _Ignorant, full of hatred and self-hatred, he comes into our domain, gives himself to the sea and the abyss. And once he has come, he will find it is not easy to leave. Why would we release this one and take you when we have you both in the seat of our power?_

Javert heard the echoes of the mers which sang destruction to lustful sailors and the pieuvres who dragged the corrupt ones to their doom. Crushing and greedy, judging and finding wanting: Javert's strength was nothing beside theirs.

He experienced a long moment of despair, a temptation to let the ocean have them both. Then Valjean's voice was in his mind, and Valjean's many limbs were holding him up.

 _No,_ Valjean sent, as certain as he had been in the Seine. _I will not permit your sacrifice._

He addressed the ocean calmly, in words Javert could also hear. _I did not come to you freely — I know you spoke to my mind; you compelled my choice. Know this: I do not freely choose destruction, and neither does this man._

L'Océan was silent, with the ominous, deafening silence of the sea floor. Perhaps before the Seine, before Jean Valjean, throughout the eternities of their existence, the greedy oceans had never before encountered such defiance.

Then: _We did not compel you entirely, little man. We answered the deepest desire of your heart. There is no escape from the abyss of man's destruction, from his fatalities, from his base instincts and fears. There is no escape for you._

 _No escape save this,_ Valjean sent. _I do not now choose destruction or self-destruction. We, both of us, choose to live, and you can have nothing of us that we do not freely surrender._

Here was the grim strength that had lifted the caryatid of Puget, that had transfigured lives, not least of all his own. Javert was surrounded by the fierceness of Valjean’s desire to live once more, on his own terms, and — not a surprise, not any longer — for Javert himself. 

Javert had made his choice on the cobblestones of the Seine, at the mouth of the labyrinth; he chose now.

_We do not belong to you. He is not yours, he belongs to me; we belong to each other. We reject your domain, we reject you._

The rumbling earthquake that followed was that made by all the ocean creatures, the kraken and leviathan, the devil-fish and sea-eels, the roil of the ocean's mindless, soulless rage bent on their destruction. Against this furious, gathering power, Javert felt answering strength coil in the limbs that circled him, felt Valjean's bright courage join with his own mind to offer what resistance they both could.

Javert felt himself taken up, seized and buffeted by a crushing current that no human power could withstand. Without Valjean's limbs to protect him, without Valjean's consciousness around his, he would have been consumed whole. But Valjean upheld him in the maelstrom, and somehow, their minds and bodies joined tightly together, they supported and shielded each other.

And then the storm abruptly ceased. Once again, vast silence descended: that of the slumbering kraken, of sea serpents, the slow, massive creatures that lived on the ocean floor. But l’Océan was all of these and none of these, and they spoke into the silence with a thoughtful, deliberate rumble very different from that which had gone before. 

_It seems that within man's fatalities lies one supreme constraint — the human heart, the spirit which has no place in our own domain._

Was Nature conceding the unjustness of its claim, and finally admitting to the possibility of salvation? If a thunderstorm could stay its hand from the ship it would have destroyed, it might have sounded like this.

 _And so, with your human heart, you would claim him; you would both choose to live for each other._ An earthquake taken by tenderness, a predator showing mercy to its prey. _You have indeed shown yourselves to be beyond our domain. We release our claim over him. Take him, then, he is yours._

A tidal wave swept him up, swept up Valjean, and in a tangle of limbs they were both flung through the watery cavern at great speed, the words of l'Ocean echoing around them.

_Mark this. Should you once again find yourselves on the path of destruction, of self-destruction, we will not hesitate to renew our claim. Man is finite, and Nature is eternal, and the abyss is limitless._

Again, Javert was falling through darkness, through water, like Valjean into Toulon's sea, like his own plunge into the Seine. 

But this time he landed on dry land, the passageway of caves, into which the first light of dawn was breaking. 

As in the Seine, Valjean was with him, and he embraced Javert in wet arms that were human once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) ON OCTOPUS ANATOMY:  
>  **GRAPHIC. PLEASE DO NOT READ IF EASILY SQUICKED.**  
>  _Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually bearing suction cups. The arms of octopuses are often distinguished from the pair of feeding tentacles found in squid and cuttlefish. Both types of limb are muscular hydrostats. When octopuses reproduce, one uses a specialized arm called a hectocotylus to transfer spermatophores (packets of sperm) from the terminal organ of the reproductive tract (the cephalopod "penis") into the other’s mantle cavity. The hectocotylus in benthic octopuses is usually the third right arm._
> 
> [ Here is a photo of an octopus beak](http://www.asnailsodyssey.com/IMAGES/OCTOPUS/DosidGig3JosOsborne.jpg). Ideal for kissing/delivering of air underwater if you squint!
> 
> [This depicts an octopus hectocotylus](http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/images/invertebrates/octopus_whole.jpg); [this, a scientific drawing](http://tolweb.org/accessory/Ocythoe_additional_features?acc_id=2459) of one. Ideal for, you know.
> 
> [ Here is a diagram depicting usual octopus heterosex](http://i.imgur.com/BkVqajy.jpg). **Again, please DO NOT click, if that is not your thing.** It’s not a particularly (or at all) intimate act, except in [this species](https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/08/24/harlequin-octopus-makes-scientists-question-anti-social-stereotypes/), which [mates beak-to-beak](http://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/news_images/Pacific%20striped%20octopus%20.jpg) and then cuddles in a very cute pile for days afterwards ♥
> 
> [Here is a link to an article on **octopus same-sex behaviour**](https://evolhappens.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/lutz-voight-1994.pdf)! In a video recorded by the deep-sea submersible Alvin in 1994, the smaller male was observed to insert his hectocotylus into the mantle cavity of the larger male, thereby copulating with an individual of the same sex and incidentally also of a different species. Clearly an important step towards supporting the theory of male octopus same-sex conduct toward a human male….
> 
> (2) TOILERS' SEXY GOTHIC:  
> The descriptions of Javert discovering Clubin’s remains echo that of Gilliat discovering that man, as well as the descriptions of Gilliat’s combat with the Devil-Fish, are all echoed in _Toilers_ 2.4.1-4. Only Hugo would describe a man’s desperate struggle against a sea-octopus in this uber-sexified Gothic way, but we should all be grateful for it...


	6. Epilogue - Soldier's Bay

Two men who have temporarily laid aside their burdens, two bodies bared to the elements, two minds bent to one purpose, and they take to the sea under a clear morning sky. The ocean embraces them; they have nothing more to fear from the deep.

"You are an excellent student," Valjean tells Javert, when at last the swimming lessons are over and the men subside under blankets on the rocky beach of Soldier's Bay.

Javert rather hopes lessons of another kind might occur. After all, it is early in the morning and the beach is deserted. He cannot hear Valjean's thoughts any longer, but he does not need supernatural abilities to read the flush of Valjean's hairy chest, to understand the glint in his eye, to know Valjean has the same hope that he is only now learning to ask for.

As is Javert. "Teach me something else," he says meaningfully, and Valjean presses a wet, naked body against his and kisses him. The sea and sky observe their embrace on a blanket atop the rocks, watch them move against each other as if they have finally become one. 

After their passion subsides, Javert might return to the caves to retrieve Sieur Clubin's belt. He might return it to Fr. Clubin, and put to rest the suspicions as to how the captain had met his end. 

Valjean has already made his confessions to Cosette and Marius, and was humbled to receive their tears and forgiveness. He might also consider making a purchase of No. 38 Rue Hauteville — with its haunted paintings and grand history, where a writer might, in the not-too-distant future, live out his exile from his homeland and write about men's frailties and the supreme constraint that overrides them. 

But the summer stretches warm and golden before the two of them, like the future they now share, and there will be time enough later.

**Author's Note:**

> My supreme gratitude: to Firestorm717, who whipped my outline into shape and inspired the painting and the fight; to Esteven, who consulted on every historical and geographical detail, recommended the use of Hauteville House and the Ozannes and the Hugo-swimming-nude link, and the pilot cutter; to Kainosite, who made the fiercest 20k line beta imaginable, who made me razor-sharp travel and trickster structural fixes and also fixed my purple prose, and whom I am heartily sorry to have tortured with tectonic plate metaphors and _The Toiler/M. Tentacles_. This story would be so much poorer without each of you; you deserve everything under the whole sea and sky as well as all that is in my human heart. 
> 
> As was explained to me, all Valvert octopus fic, including Miss M's gorgeous [Nothing But Flesh and Blood](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4377611) owes its origins to with Hugo’s masterly novel _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ [(Toilers of the Sea)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilers_of_the_Sea). (Unfortunately, I ended up writing not only a Hugo Novels cross-over but also some Hugo RPF, for which I am sorry.)
> 
> Hugo was obsessed with the sea, a repeated theme in many of his poems. One of his most famous was **“Pleine Mer/Plein Ciel”** (“The Whole Sea/The Whole Sky”) which was published in his 1859 collection _[“La Légende des siècles”](http://abardel.free.fr/hypotextes/pleine_mer.htm.)_. In “Pleine Mer”, human ignorance and hatred destroyed by the implacable ocean and abyss are represented by a shipwreck named after a sea-monster, “Leviathan”; in contrast, in the “Plein Ciel” portion, Hugo postulated that the enlightened spirit of love would result in man’s salvation and freedom:
> 
> _Au droit, à la raison, à la fraternité, À la religieuse et sainte vérité_  
>  _Sans impostures et sans voiles, À l'amour, sur les cœurs serrant son doux lien_  
>  _Au juste, au grand, au bon, au beau... — Vous voyez bien_  
>  _Qu'en effet il monte aux étoiles ! Il porte l'homme à l'homme et l'esprit à l'esprit._
> 
> Law, reason, brotherhood, the religious and sacred truth  
> Without falsehoods and without disguise;  
> it is love, tightening that gentle bond upon their hearts  
> Of the just, the great, the good, the beautiful ... — You see  
> That indeed it rises to the stars! It leads man to man and spirit to spirit.
> 
> The story's title is taken from Hugo’s Preface to **_Les Travailleurs de la Mer_** :  
>  _Religion, Society, and Nature! ... The mysterious difficulty of life results from all three. Man strives with obstacles under the form of superstition, under the form of prejudice, and under the form of the elements. A triple constraint [anagkê, or fate] weighs upon us. There is the fatality of dogmas, the oppression of human laws, the inexorability of nature. In Notre-Dame de Paris the author denounced the first; in the Misérables he exemplified the second; in this book he indicates the third. With these three fatalities mingles that inward fatality (within man): the supreme constraint [fate], the human heart._


End file.
